The trailer for Thai Cherry Magic was super cute so I decided to watch the Japanese version while waiting for it to air, and I absolutely loved it. That made me even more excited to see what Thailand would do with the story, especially because I knew for sure we would get skinship that was missing from the Japanese adaptation. Unfortunately Thailand's version of Cherry Magic was a big letdown. The production values were great and the second couple was better than the Japanese version. But Achi's character didn't work at all. He was incredibly, frustratingly passive and didn't have the kindness that Adachi had in the Japanese version.

The way the character was written, it never made sense for him to be hesitant to get into a relationship with Karan in the first place . He had the support of his coworkers who wanted them to get together and he said early on that he enjoyed the attention that Karan gave him. Yet he kept dragging his feet for no reason which made him seem passive and weak. Then after he finally made up his mind to get into a relationship, the writers suddenly threw in the company policy against dating and Karan being forced by the boss to make an impossible sales goal. Karan did all of the work to keep their relationship alive, including getting on his knees in front of an abusive client, while Achi did nothing to help or protect him. I couldn't care at all about Achi after that.

That was the biggest problem that sank the character but there were other weird writing decisions as well, like having Rock help Pai instead of Achi when her ex was berating her and having Karan's sister be the one to convince her mother to accept his relationship instead of Achi doing it.

There were things I liked about the Thai version: Tay's performance was lovely, I had some problems with how Karan was written but he was sweet and charming and made the character a lot more lovable than he would have been otherwise. I also enjoyed Jinta being a chaos gremlin all the time (though why didn't they have him lose his virginity in the end??). Pai and Rock were cute but underdeveloped, though Sing's performance did a lot to make up for the sketchy writing. The next to last episode in Pattaya was charming and the lovemaking scene was very well done so kudos for that.

But overall I have to say this was a disappointment. It also makes me nervous about the upcoming GMMTV adaptations of Ossan's Love and My Love Mix Up. I think maybe Japan and Thailand are too culturally different for these adaptations to work well but i guess we'll find out.