3
5
jpny01
This is a beautiful story.
This is more LGBTQ+ focused than the majority of BLs, which have a focus on boys being cute together - and that's perfectly fine. I love those too. But this series may not resonate as much with audiences who are looking for that type of romance. There are many cute and heart-warming moments here, but this is a coming-of-age story, so the arc is about Mico being unable to attain love until he's able to attain self-acceptance.Anyway, a lot of the criticism is over the lack of communication between the leads, which is odd, as most BLs heavily lean on implausible failures of communication to generate the final dramatic hump of the series. Here, I thought the communication problem was entirely authentic, and its resolution equally true to life, requiring outside help, whereas often in a story I'm thinking "you know, these two have mutual friends who know both sides of the story and can easily fix this..."
The acting is very good. JC is great, suffusing his character with confidence in his intellect, bold nerdiness, and insecurity about everything else. Tony is underrated - playing someone emotionally and verbally reserved, he has to pack a lot of emotion into subtle moments. His nervous giggling as he's gearing up to sing is masterful and authentic - and at the end of Ep 5, during a pause before an important moment, he worldessly radiates with an understated stare so much vulnerability and longing that I audibly gasped and started crying, and I'm tearing up just thinking about it now. And his desolation in Ep 7 may crush you. The support characters are all well-cast for their roles - I loved that everyone in the friend group (the Padawans) is clueless except Junjun, who sees everything. It was nice to see a minor character play a crucial role - that he was called was the best possible decision that could have been made and he was the only path to a happy ending.
The script is tightly written, with many layers of meaning, the central poem of their school project woven through the story, so that you can pick up new things with each viewing. (Note if you're watching with subtitles that lines that sound clunky are often from the poem.) Even the t-shirts reflect feelings and internal conflicts, and the heart on Mico's wall represents where he is, etc. The project performance in Ep 7 was a little too on-the-nose, but it was well-setup throughout the series so it worked. Or notice the color of Xavier's backwards baseball cap in Ep 6 and think about what that symbolizes. Both characters have an arc, and the resolution depends on a powerful statement of the importance of self-acceptance.
The cinematography and set design were artful, with delightful color coordination (e.g. Ep 8 with Mico's pink accessory in the closed tea shop), the music was beautifully integrated, e.g. he final music cue in Ep 5 was perfect to maximize the impact of the final line. The editing is stunning - there are scenes where you'll gasp at the way they managed to overcome safe distancing to give you real intimacy.
All of this was accomplished within the tight constraints of the COVID/social media setting - and I wonder if maybe that inspired a higher level of creativity.
There are a couple of issues. The side couple is adorable, but they didn't really serve much purpose in the story. Kookai's importance ended with her declaration towards the beginning, and Seph never had one - only Junjun was needed throughout, and the time would have been better spent developing Xavier's context, or more time establishing Mico's character at the beginning - or just making the series an episode shorter.
There are also a couple of important scenes that are non-linear but it's very unclear and confusing about where they fall in the story. I like that the production respects the intelligence of the audience, but we needed a "two weeks ago" or something in a couple of cases, or some other means of context. If you're reading this before watching, the most important is a conversation in Ep 8 involving the teacher, which occurs between Ep 1 & Ep 2.
The second one is a 1:1 conversation in Ep 8 with JunJun that occurs prior to a group chat the Padawans have at the end of Ep 7 and explains the strange things they say to Mico and advise him to do.
I've rewatched much of this several times, and this is is one of my favorite BLs of all time. I highly recommend it - just be forewarned it may take 1.5 episodes to get into it.
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Cute but a bit shallow
This was a cute romance with good chemistry between the leads - especially in the earlier episodes. The dialogue was fairly snappy and cute, and it had many nice moments.I think the premise is a little wasted. There were two directions they could have taken, but didn't. One would be to accent that he's a robot and doesn't really understand humans and human society outside of what someone could read, and all the funny situations that develop from that. There's a scene where the main character is so turned on by the robot that he has to "relieve himself" - I would have liked to see him wondering what's wrong with him, and asking himself is Ever 9 is in effect sophisticated porn.
The second, and probably the one that would have made the most sense, is to examine what a person is. What are we? We're constructed with our DNA as a blueprint and we have basic emotional and behavioral settings also programmed by our DNA, and the rest of what we are is based on whatever we experience. Is an artificial being like Ever 9 much different?
We often blame things we do on past trauma, essentially "programming" that we have no control over, so why is an AI any less a living thing, provided it is truly autonomous?
This was totally ignored, even in the decisions his uncle makes.
This reduces the premise to a shallow gimmick and the plot is formulaic and predictable. I enjoyed it until the last 2 episodes, which degenerated into a tedious montage of past happiness played against a truly sappy love ballad.
Speaking of which, the music in this was tiresome and got on my nerves in the last two episodes.
The acting and production values are quite good. Ever 9 is just robotic enough to seem not quite human while conveying emotion clearly, and the main character is good at portraying how closed and clueless he is in dealing with humans and only able to open up to a robot (another lost opportunity for examination).
This is a good series to binge - it was hard to wait for a weekly episode at the beginning, and the last few episodes are better all at once, especially the last two. I wouldn't enthusiastically recommend it, but it's cute and entertaining and short enough that even if it's not really your thing it's not a huge investment of time.
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- The acting - excellent overall. Especially the BL couple, who were so natural and comfortable - I think there was a lot of ad-libbing, but it worked really well.
- The music - a big step above the usual Thai drama standard. The music was serious when it needed to be. It was actually dark and beautiful in the "almost-kiss" scene late in Ep 7 - I was really surprised and moved.
- The men. Jeez. Other than the main character, the boys were stunning, especially In.
But unfortunately:
- The writing. So, so bad. First of all, the main character is unlikable. He's a hypocrite and is trying to steal another person's girlfriend. He has no positive qualities - he's not intelligent or funny, he has no integrity, and when he has any agency at all, he becomes abusive with it. Also, what's the message here? If you're a loser, join a biker gang and start acting like a dick and you'll be cool?
The BL couple is written nicely, but there's NO PAYOFF!!! Not even a single kiss! It doesn't make any sense - one boy is not gay, but he agrees to date the other because he doesn't want to lose his friendship? WTF?
If you're here for the BL, it's not worth slogging through this awkward, unpleasant mess. I couldn't find an InSun cut, but if you can, it might be worth it, provided there's a payoff in Our Skyy - I haven't watched it yet.
It's a pity, because there were a few nice writing touches, like the conversation in the aquarium - it's like there was a good writer for the dialogue, but the worst one in the world for the plot.
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The writing is awful - not only are we stuck with the same tired, tired, tired plot device of the girlfriend in the way, Knock is such a horrible, weak, selfish, awful person that I would have preferred this ended with Korn strangling him to death. There is no way anyone who isn't self-loathing would ever take Knock back - why would you? How could you ever trust him? He actually caught his girlfriend cheating on him and he STILL got back together with her. How can Korn know that Knock won't have another gay panic and latch onto the first girl who passes by? I kept hoping Knock would die horribly in a murder suicide with Pleng and Korn could end up with Farm.
Any I'm sick to death of "I'm not gay, I only love you." What kind of message is this for young gay people watching this? That they have a chance with their straight friends?
This series is so bad that I almost decided I would never watch another Thai BL drama. Fortunately I got over it.
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Cute and worth watching, but a little messy.
The first four or five episodes of this are unusually delightful, with painfully shy culinary student Lukchup and his friends vs his crush, the popular senior architecture student and picky eater Ram and his friends. All of them are nice people and their interactions are cute and dynamic.The architects repeatedly find excuses to have lunch with the chefs, in sort of a take on Sheherezade but with cooking instead of storytelling. It's really sweet and well-written, with hints of attractions outside the main couple, and I could easily have watched 13 episodes of that and not gotten bored.
Unfortunately, a huge amount of screentime is devoted to the scheming of the wannabee-girfriend and a campaign of very serious bullying. While this plotline is decently handled and the good-guys aren't complete idiots like they usually are and deal with the situation intelligently, it felt a little like a completely different show. There's the main BL, with, shall we kindly say, "understated" acting against the bullying storyline and the lakorn acting of the villainess. She's quite good and convincingly loathesome, but it's just too overpowering for a series like this.
The external threat wasn't at all necessary as there were plenty of characters and relationships to explore. Lukchup is painfully cute, and Ram is handsome enough, but their relationship is so chaste that eventually it becomes awkward and unbelievable, especially as the popular secondary couple Sky & Phai go from 0 to "let's go to my place and f@#$" in 15 seconds (They actually do say this, albeit in euphemisms). The main pair actors are apparently not planning to be professional actors, and it shows with their total unwillingness to do anything gay (even a fujoshi fantasizing about them doesn't have them so much as kiss) whereas the guys playing Sky and Phai seriously commit and provide what could have been red-hot if there had been any setup.
Likewise, it's hinted that Lukchup's handsome older brother and his super-hot manager are involved, but this is never explored, and there are two het and one BL couple that use up a chunk of the finale. One of these couples is cute and does have a bit of time throughout the series, but their progression is rather sudden at the end.
If they had stuck with the earlier structure and explored the interactions and developing relationships of the two groups, this would have been a better series. As is, it's messy and the later episodes are things you just want to get through to reach the end.
I can recommend this, because I got real enjoyment from it, but I did do a lot of fast-fowarding in the later episodes. The ending is satisfying but underwhelming.
Story: 8. This is high, but the beginning is really good, and even though I didn't like the evil-female storyline, it was well-written and the good-guys are not clueless and handle it well. The OTT effeminate gay character is not played just for laughs (and is really good-looking), and immdiately sees through the villainess.
Acting: 6. As typical of Thai BL, the understated style prevents unskilled actors from being embarassing, but there aren't any standouts either. Many of them do a great job of being cute. I'll leave it at that.
Music: Better than average, and very catchy.
Rewatch: I would and probably will rewatch the initial episodes, which I would probably have rated a 9-9.5.
Overall: 7.5 - but if I could split the series, 9 for the first half, 6 for the second half.
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Excellent Short
DON'T read the synopsis on GagaOOlala - it spoils the story.This was really good - it's beautifully shot and edited, with fantastic color grading. The acting is good - the bigger guy is a stronger actor, but the cute one holds his own.
This is very narratively tight - the meaning of the strange opening scene becomes starkly apparent at the end - it's quite powerful. There is one plot hole which will almost certainly come to mind, which is "do people not ask each other what they do for a living?" I think this is somewhat plausible given how they meet and immediately launch into a fairly physical relationship, but the story appears to span at least be a few days so it's a bit odd, although I will say that I dated a guy for 2 years and he had no idea what I actually did - just that I had an office job.
Anyway, it doesn't really matter - this film isn't trying to be realistic, it's about perspectives.
This is NSFW - it's not graphic, but there's a lot of love going on. A lot of hot, sweaty love.
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A Disappointment
The acting in this is very good. Both leads do a good job. The OST is good, but overused on very high volume. It's filmed decently and the overall production quality is fine.But the story... it's a BL because of Ep 6, but that's about it. Other than that it's mostly two guys talking about their girlfriends, including the very last scene, which is between one of them and his girlfriend. BL has a weird obsession with straight guys.
I like slow-burn relationships, but there is really almost no burn at all - until suddenly they're on fire. The final episode was entirely getting in and out of cars and the gf meeting, and the ending was mystifyingly open. If you're going to make us slog through this, at least let's have a nice payoff, not an abrupt ending with no closure.
I really got no pleasure out of watching this and I can't recommend it.
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Wonderful Short.
I think people are rating this as if it were a regular BL series with twelve 45-min episodes. Judging it as a short, it's really good.The castdid a great job of realizing two chracters in 12 minutes, and I really cared what happened. The loser kid was so adorable (he's a dork) and the sad guy did world-weary well. The way the story unfolded was not entirely predictable, even though it went to the "fall and end up with faces too close together" trope which needs to be taken out to a field, soaked in gasoline, and burned. I would have give this an 8 but for that.
Anyway, well worth 12 minutes.
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There was so much extraneous time-filler in this series that it felt like a shameless cash-grab. I had to set it on 2x or even skip some scenes that were just too much torture to watch.
Going back to it later, my reaction didn't change much - Book & Frame are enjoyable largely because of Ohm, but the storyline is bad, and the exploitative use of very troubling events without examining them with any depth or there being any consequences was actually disturbing.
Anyway, all the actors have been improving, and they're nice to look at, but I can't express how disappointed I am in this season.
If you like the actor who plays Frame (Ohm Pawat), then I recommend He's Coming to me, where he's amazing. And maturing well, I must say. He's also great in The Shipper, although mostly straight in that series.
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Had Potential
Overall, this was a disappointment, given its initial promise. It had many things going for it, but in the end the writing, or lack thereof, reduces this to a mediocrity.Tae's Phap was a really original and different character, and he and Singto were a good odd couple. This doesn't follow the standard seme-uke formula - their personalities are what are opposites, not their appearances and sexual positions. Their appearances are of course opposites, but that's a reflection of their personalities, not the masculine-feminine polarity we usually get.
The story is actually funny at first, with a fairly clever cockroach cam in the first episode, but the humor is unforunately dumped later on for the usual unnecessary implausible miscommunication-based melodrama.
it feels like this was a 10-episode story that was dragged out to 12, forcing Maze to cease his development in Ep 9 and backtrack, which just made him seem like an asshole and ruined the audience's desire to see them together. At the beginning, Maze has real reason to be furious with Phap and frustrated with him. When he returns to that state in Ep 9, it's just depressing and made me not care anymore.
Even the ending, when Phap returns, there's apparently a plan, but what it was I have no idea - have Phap act like Maze for no apparent reason?
Phap isn't really given much backstory, which I suppose isn't critical as he's a care-free artist - but Maze really needed one. We do get his central motivation and the reason why in the very last part of the last episode, but as there was no build up to it, it was too late to have any meaning.
Also, the central conflict for both couples is the relationship between Maze an Nueng which is confusing. Maybe there's a subtitle problem, but their relationship seems pretty clear and it's incomprehensible how Phap and Tharn can misunderstand it - especially Phap, who had it explained to him.
One thing I will say - it's more or less revolutionary that all the characters are jealous over other men instead of the usual women thrown in for no apparent reason other than to add some unwelcome heteronormativity.
The time wasted on incomprehensible drama could have been invested in the secondary couple, which were so unfleshed-out that it was difficult to care about them, other than Yacht being so adorable. They are never really integrated into the story - they're more or less just nailed to it. And with no context, they're just two guys who show up and won't tell each other how they feel but like each other for reasons that aren't ever discussed.
It's not all bad - it tries a lot of new things, the characters are original and interesting (at least at first), and the first half of the series is very engaging and charming. Tae is the real standout, playing an impish and odd artist - we've really never seen anything like this before and it was very refreshing. It's a pity they derailed his character in Ep 9.
It's worth watching just for Tae, but I wouldn't go in with any great expectations.
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It's not good, but not the worst, either.
This is a tough one to review. I'll start with negatives and end on positives.- There are too many characters. None of the story arcs get enough time to be developed, and many of them are just abandoned. This is very unsatisfying. If it had been 6 interns, it might have worked better.
- It might be my Western outlook (being sorry is not enough - accountability for one's actions means accepting the consequences, like being fired for framing other employees and bribery), but it's profoundly disturbing when characters are the most horrible people in the world for 11 episodes, then suddenly feel bad at the end and are totally forgiven and get pretty much everything as a reward. Even if you can accept that morally, it's exceptionally unsatisfying plot-wise. You want the good people who suffer to come out on top, not the horrible people who spent the whole series tearing everyone around them down - we're not talking slightly bad, we're talking seriously malicious.
- Since there are 8 male characters and only 2 horrible and evil female characters, it would have made more sense to make this a BL. You could have two of the 8 be straight and 6 paired off. Why would you not just have Kim & Copter get together? Or Tae & Tee? Or alternatively Tae & Bas? Only Tee has anything to do with a female character, in a rather pointless storyline that goes nowhere.
- I don't know if any BL writers have ever had a regular job, but the Thai management style according to dramas is horrible and counterproductive. That hotel would fail in weeks with that level of incompetent management. Bosses bully and arbitrarily punish people. It gets really old in this series.
Positives:
- Tae is a really good actor. In Ep 10 he has an opportunity to show what he can do, and it's first-rate. He's playing off a very good actress, which always helps, but I haven't cried that much in a long time, and he's powerful yet fairly subtle and restrained, given what's going on. It felt appropriate and real. He's the standout throughout the series. The acting in general is pretty good. Most of it is not terribly inspired, but none of it is embarassing - that's typical of Thai series, which thankfully almost never stray into overacting.
- The BL couple is really cute. Kay is adorable and Pleum is really, really attractive. They don't have much screen time and their relationship is insufficiently developed, but it's not bad for the time given it, and there's no mannequin kiss - it's one of the best we've gotten, and would have been a strong conclusion if they had been a focus of the story with better buildup.
All in all, I can't recommend it. You might skim through ep 1-9 for the BL couple and Tae, then watch ep 10 & 11, then don't watch ep 12 if you don't want to be upset.
Story: 3 - it's a mess, and whoever wrote it doesn't seem to have known where the story was going as it was being written.
Acting: 8.5 - It's really more like a 7, but Tae drags the average up with his 10 performance.
Music: 7 - not memorable and not in the way.
Rewatch: 3 - I'm shallow and I would probably rewatch Pleum's scenes, in many of which he's wearing a skimpy muscle shirt. He has a hot body and I'm shallow. He's handsome and charming, too.
Overal: 6.5 - The suggested score is 5.5, but that seems a little too harsh - there are some nice things in here.
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Entertaining and fun
You can't come into this expecting too much - it's silly and madcap. The humor is... Thai, so it's not for everyone (a bit too slapstick for my tastes).Anyway, the boys in this are really good-looking (Ko is a 10/10 for me and Teng is pretty close behind), the rural setting is a refreshing change from wealthy urban engineering students, and the plot starts off strangely with shamans, potions, and ghosts, but then becomes a normal BL.
Some people seemed confused by the potion - the shaman is obviously a fraud, as he charges 10 baht which is $0.30 for a love potion, then hands them a small plastic bottle of water. You're never meant to think that there's any chance that it's real. If someone had the power to make people fall in love, he'd charge a lot more than that, right? He's be a billionaire. If you're not convinced, the boy the potion was for was already obviously smitten with the main character, and after he drinks it, he doesn't magically change - their relationship evolves the normal way, and Ko doesn't seem to give it much thought soon after it fails to work..
It's also kind of nice that nobody makes a big deal out of sex on a moral level, although they do treat it as sealing a commitment. The character Tak is apparently seriously hung - he's able to make a ghost moan like a banshee and a guy he schtups later on asks him if he's even human given how painful it was - I thought that was kind of funny - no "how could I have gotten drunk and slept with that guy I hate?" but "Damn that thing is big - I'm going to be sore for a week."
If casual sex after drinking bothers you a lot, maybe skip this. Or if cheating on your gf with a guy bothers you, also maybe skip this. Otherwise, just go into it expecting light entertainment and you'll enjoy it. It's not that long, so it's not like you have to spend 10 hours on it.
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Good, but a missed opportunity.
I really want to give this a 10, but I can't. The acting in this is better than any BL I can think of. All three performers deliver powerful performances, with Kaleb Ong as a standout. Enzo Santiago is as good as ever, and you might be surprised by Gio Emprese, who usually plays pathetic "comic" relief sexual predators, but here is wonderful as a deeply spiritual man put in a painful situation that he has to weather with grace and love.The technical faults in this are inexcusable. The sound is terrible, the direction mediocre at best, tending towards melodrama in a story that that is already dramatic enough in content and in the strength of the acting.
The cinematography is also inexcusable. Half the shots feature people obscured by plants that are in the foreground, so it's not like the cinematographer could have missed them. If it was intentional, then I would ask, "Is this really what you want to do for a living?" There's a shot that occurs after Kaleb had been making me cry for 20 straight minutes that is so unintentionally funny that I burst out laughing. It involves a very critical moment in the series that represents a serious and spiritual moment, but it's a shot through Enzo's spread legs at a kneeling Kaleb - that's D/s sexual, which I suppose is appropriate for a gay boy and his gay angel. In gay angel porn.
The editing is also problemmatic, with scenes that would otherwise have been powerful dragged out so long that they're drained of energy and start to make you uncomfortable and feel sorry for Enzo, because they're almost all his. There's only one really long scene that had to be long, and it's doing a rosary, which the Catholics watching are already aware take forever, and the scene is really cute and funny.
If this had average BL acting, I wouldn't be writing this at all, because I would have dropped it half way through the first episode. But because the acting is a solid 10+, I feel comfortable recommending this, but just be prepared for a story that will make you cry, partly because you're moved by the story and the actors, and partly because your ears are bleeding due to the awful sound. It's worth it just for Kaleb - I'd watch anything he's in.
Warning: Do not watch the end credits scene, unless you want a beautiful story with a perfect ending reduced to a 1980s era sitcom. It's so bad and cringeworthy in every way (except how hot Enzo looked in it, but you can just google him) that I sat gaping at my screen and wondering if I really saw what I just saw. If you read the words "5 months after", you've gone too far, but there's still time to stop. It's up to you.
Outtakes begin at 32:40.
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It's not THAT bad.
A lot of the reviews and the comments section are a bit harsh, but I wonder if maybe people were reading the comments and letting other people's opinions sway their own - notice that most people said they watched the whole thing or that it's "so bad that it's good."This is not so bad that it's good, and it's not bad at all.
I think we need to keep in mind is that there is a Thai BL formula which includes a huge dose of fantasy - for example, the whole school is gay, or nobody has a homophobic bone in their body. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, and it's often a nice break from the real world, where there is no escape from homophobia. But that doesn't make everything else "wrong".
So first, some negatives that aren't negatives:
The budget. Yes, it's low. So what? Almost all BL are low budget, and it's cheaper to film in the Philippines or Thailand than it is in China, not to mention the censorship and really, really difficult municipal regulatory issues. The issue isn't the budget - I'm sure we can think or a ton of Thai BLs that had healthy budgets that were terrible. The issue is what you do within the constraints of the budget. Do you have a competent cinematographer and director? Is it well-edited? Is the sound & lighting good (these can be the hardest, BTW - editing & cinematography are about talent, skill, and time - lighting & sound are about money [as well as talent and skill]).
This show did a good job with all of these.
The writing is just OK. The "I hate you" phase was better, and had some good ideas in it. The relationship part itself didn't work as well and was a bit rushed, but imagine the level of censorship this production must have faced - it's a miracle that it was made and released at all.
The acting - one of the leads is a bit stiff, but he's not BAD, just a bit limited in range. There aren't any embarassing or laughable performances, and by BL standards they're fairly good.
There is a toxic female character, but there are also two positive female characters, and the toxic one is an over-the-top villainess who does not consume a lot of screentime, nor does she make anyone in the main pairing irrationally jealous like the standard BL formula requires.
But what is most important is for there to be heart in the project, and this has that. You can really feel that everyone involved cares about this series, whereas so many BLs are just cashing in on the popularity of the genre - including a lot of the high-budget productions. Every single person involved in this production risked their futures to make this for us, and we should appreciate that and give it our support.
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Dismal
I had expected an improvement over One Day Pag-Ibig, but this worse in every regard. The same technical errors and problems are present, the acting is not improved, and the story is just derivative, moves in circles, and you will be astonished that they could end it the way they did after we slogged through this series.One character does something that takes 2 years, and it's never discussed between the main characters. Maybe that would have been a scene we would have liked to have watched instead of an endless sequence of Sef trying to hug Andrei, who invariably pushes him away. Addicted/Heroin is outright copied in several spots, but without the charm and wit of that series.
The acting isn't terrible, at least not from the lead pair, but it's not exactly inspired, either. There's finally a kiss at one point, and it's painfully obviously fake. Come on.
I wanted to like this, and I was expecting a lot more. At least some passion, instead of dreary BL by the numbers.
But there is no motive for improvement because the actors have large tiktok followings that will flock to see anything they're in. That provides me with zero motive to waste any more time on anything this production company drops on us. We're already 2/2 for the ship not sailing. Do I need it to be 3/3?
I want to say something positive, but I'm struggling to think of anything. The theme song is good, but after you've heard it 1,000 times it loses it's appeal. Allen has a beautiful everything and he and Ivo are both very cute. With proper coaching and direction, I think they have enough talent to be effective actors. That's about it.
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