A hoary aphorism declares, “You must love yourself before you can love another.” The makers of Boys Be Brave! attempted to build an entire BL series around this piece of wisdom. For the most part, they succeed. BBB is a character-centric tale. Internal worlds for the characters take precedence over action or story. The loose plot revolves around a trio of angsty young men, each battling his own unique demons. Each feels alienated from the world around him, and the series measures the steps each takes to repair the damage this self-imposed isolation has caused to their life and to their personality. The result is a series that prioritizes learning how to embrace one’s self in order to forge new connections with others. An emotionally intelligent script grounds the series, and the three lead actors convey these complex emotional beats efficaciously. Lacking any sensational plot developments or heavy skinship scenes, the series will likely fly under the radar of popular discourse. It is ideally suited for those who like introspective works heavy on character analysis and emotional complexity—and not, primarily, romantic emotion. Self-love is the main theme here. Romance flows from that.

Kim Jin Wu is an academic overachiever whose success has come at the price of isolation from an inattentive parent and any vestige of a social life. Jin Wu lives alone and prefers online tutorials to interactions with fellow students. He moves within and amidst the bustling student life of his university, but is not really a part of it. He has a crush on Jung Ki Sub, which might be fine except he loathes Ki Sub as a person. He avoids a personal life through the device of an Ideal Partner Checklist. Since almost no one conforms to the qualities on the list, he essentially suppresses this whole part of his life.

Jung Ki Sub lacks any strength of personality, conforming his own behavior to please whoever is around him. He cannot—or will not—say no to anyone on any subject. This has resulted in an entirely different alienation, as people misconstrue his “blowing in the wind” behavior as betrayal, indifference, or inconstancy. Ki Sub suffers from an unspecified heart condition, which causes his heart to race. Dangerously, we presume, but the series never explains what the issue is, what challenges it causes him, or even resolves it in the end. Ki Sub’s penchant to agree with everyone seems to be a defense mechanism from childhood, designed to keep him calm and even-keeled in moments of stress. Avoid conflict, and the heart never beats dangerously fast. From the beginning of the series, Ki Sub insists he is incapable of liking anyone, though the reason why this should be so is never clear. One can infer that since liking someone leads to increased heart rates, maybe he, too, has suppressed this part of his life.

Choi Bal Geum is Ki Sub’s best friend, confidante, and muse. Where Ki Sub and Jin Wu attend university, Bal Geum has chosen instead to flit between a series of part-time jobs. Work allows him to keep afloat financially, though he is keenly conscious of his penury. Well before the events of the series, Bal Geum’s family tumbled from prosperity into pauperism. This lack of worldly worth induced a lack of self-worth in Bal Geum. Shame about being poor even led him to sacrifice (pre-series) an actual suitor because he deemed himself unworthy to offer love to others. He, too, is suppressing this part of his life.

The series commences when Ki Sub decides to move into the house of Jin Wu. Without first consulting Jin Wu, who will not appreciate this disturbance to his isolation. (Implausible? Sure. But it makes for a comedic opening set piece.) For reasons he himself may not fully grasp (I certainly did not), Ki Sub insists on co-habitating. Why? He wants to make himself into Jin Wu’s ideal type by following the check-list. Since Ki Sub has little sense of his own personhood, effacing his own personality to match Jin Wu’s expectations seems to him a reasonable solution. Certainly, that tactic jibes with a series so overtly concerned with portraying characters unable to love themselves. That angle also introduces another recurring theme: the foolishness of adhering to preconceived notions of “ideal types.” Having raised this concept, I rather wish the series had played with the idea more, particularly to demonstrate how rigid adherence to such a list constrains one romantic choices. In the finale, Jin Wu disparages the whole concept, but one wishes that insight had arrived earlier.

Meanwhile, back in the debut episode, Jin Wu wishes to evict the invader, from both his home and his heart. Ki Sub wants Jin Wu to accept him. On some very flimsy grounds, Ki Sub manages to get Jin Wu to a one-week trial period as roommates. He can then extend their co-habitation if at the end of that week, Jin Su asks Ki Sub to date him. The irony here is that both boys like each other already. But with one having convinced himself of the virtues of splendid isolation and the other having convinced himself that he is incapable of liking someone else, neither will admit the truth to the other. The series is largely about the process by which each comes to understand first himself, and only then to acknowledge the other’s needs. Along the way, Ki Sub even manages to effect (inadvertently) a rapprochement between Jin Wu and his distant father.

With respect to the side couple, Bal Geum’s self-imposed isolation from his troubles is disrupted when Ji In Ho, the suitor he rejected years earlier, suddenly reappears hoping for reconciliation. Their endearing subplot also becomes grounded in the quest to accept one’s self, something the series leaves unfinished for Bal Geum. (Perhaps displaying a Korean cultural attitude that self-worth derives from wealth? Or at least a disdain for the poor?) Ultimately, however, I felt these two were underwritten. Too much story potential, insufficient episode minutes available to tell it.

At its best, the series conveys emotional intelligence and honesty. The writing resonates because the lads are easy to empathize with. That all four exercise initiative to overcome his own self-defined demons also makes them easy to root for. Their very agency helps defuse some of the self-loathing that permeates the plot. The weak points largely reflect the typical short-comings of K-BL series. In moments, the plot feels rushed and the character actions come from nowhere. Some resolutions come about too easily. Anyone accustomed to watching K-BL in eight-episode chunks under 30 minutes each will be familiar with that sensation. A subplot involving a female suitor for Jin Wu shifts from humorous (she appears to hit every characteristic on Jin Wu’s list just at the moment he opens himself to the possibility of pursuing Ki Sub) to stereotypical (for just a moment there, she comes across as the sort of conniving harpy standard in BL fare) to underwritten (turns out she was never evil, she’s just another in a long line of people disappointed by Ki Sub’s need to make himself desirable to everyone). She could have had a better arc (and a GL side-plot) by fleshing out how Ki Sub’s wavering loyalty to those interested in him affected others. Likewise, Jin Wu’s father exists only in flashbacks until suddenly dominating episode 7 in a way that makes one wish that dynamic had been better built up throughout the preceding episodes. On balance, however, the series works quite well. Boys Be Brave! will appeal especially to viewers who appreciate a series strong on emotion and short on story. Those with a strong empathetic caste to their own personality will revel in the swirling emotions of the tale. Viewers who prefer a story-driven series (action—in the bedroom or otherwise) may find the series tepid.