What a waste.

Well, that was terrible.

First, I seem to recall Boun & Prem having good chemistry in Until We Meet Again, but now I'm starting to wonder if I just found them a refreshing break from Crybaby and his Talking Robot. Because in this series they have zero chemistry. Boun has some on his own because of his looks, but dressed like Bea Arthur they weren't really taking advantage of his appeal. But their acting was also unimpressive - they both did fine with their 2D roles, but they didn't manage to inject any life into this dreary series.

There is no relationship devlopment - they don't really like each other, then they have sex. Comfortably off screen. In fact, the whole basis of their relatinoship is disturbing if you think about it. Arthid met Sun once, for 15 seconds, and has been carrying a torch for him ever since. But Sun was 6 or so when they met, so Arthid is a pedo monster.

The secondary couple starts out as an oasis in the desert, but then they too dry up. They are smoking hot, though. Lee Long Shi is just ridiculous. I hope we see him a lot more. Top is also great at being a huge pile of muscle that can show vulnerability.

The "plot" is convoluted without making sense or being interesting, with no character or story development. All the characters are what they are all the way through to the last 15 minutes when they all turn into totally diffrent people to resolve the "storylines".

The directing is lackluster, the editing is fine, and the cinematography was uninspired, especially given the beautiful setting.

Story: 2. The story makes more sense than Physical Therapy, but that's about all I can say.

Acting: 5. Pretty much 2D. I found myself a little moved by the boxers and Talay, who managed to stand out a bit, the latter having great comic timing and also pulling off his 180 degree turn at the end.

Music: 5 - not much to say. It didn't ruin anything, so there's that.

Rewatch: 4 - I would probably rewatch the boxers and Talay's scenes.

Overall: 4 - It feels like it should be lower, but it's not as aggressively terrible as Check Out or Unforgotten Night, and I did get to see some attractive boys that weren't horrible like all the Check Out characters. But Even Sun is really boring.

I would skip this, epecially if you're a BounPrem fan. I was until I watched this. I get that we're all different and like different things, but giving this a 10 is ridiculous. If this is a 10, what was Until We Meet Again? an 87? Come on.

Leia Mais

This is a short film, and a very good one.

The cinematography is wonderful in this, dark but not obscured, creating a sense of claustrophobia and hopelessness.

The acting is really good, and the leads are gorgeous. The latter isn't necessary, but it sure doesn't hurt. The actors seriously committed to the love scenes - no rubber kisses or camera angles used to cheat, and it looked more natural instead of the cheesy romance-novel-cover poses you often see.

The editing was very tight and effective, and the writing was gritty and while not entirely realistic (are all guys that are customers in Light's profession that young and hot?), the story was character-driven and made sense.

This is dark subject matter, and there are things in here that are hard to watch, so if you're triggered by sexual violence, both voluntary and involuntary, this might not be for you. None of it is so bad that it's horrifying, but it's there, albeit restrained, and you don't see the full course of what happens, only enough to let you know it's happening.

A lot of people were upset by a conclusion Shuo jumped to, but remember what Light does for a living, and how many times Shuo told him to stop, yet he continued anyway. That does lead into my only criticism:

This needed to be about 5-10 minutes longer, and better set up the misunderstanding. The fact that so many people felt really upset at Shuo demonstrates that we needed to actually see a couple of the times Light lied to Shuo instead of just being told it happened. That would have given the moment more impetus and we could have sympathized with both characters.

Anyway, I highly recommend this, and I aslo recommend you go to the director's YouTube channel and watch these two guys do comedy, because they're really good at it, especially Jed. There is also a cute and funny interview with the actors there.

I gave this 9 stars in every category except Rewatch Value. There are two scenes I'm likely to watch many times, but otherwise probably not.

Leia Mais

So much potential and so frustrating

This is brilliantly acted and directed, and the writing is in detail much better than the average BL - but the story as a whole was tedious.

When you have characters kiss in the 2nd episode, you can't just slam on the brakes for 10 more episodes and then have nothing happen. The development of their relationship is beautifully done - slow burn at it's best - but it reaches a peak far before the end and then goes nowhere after that. Not slow burn - no burn, because to keep the relatioinship at a steady level they couldn't continue to show them quietly doing loving things to each other and so we didn't get any more of those beautiful moments.

Sheng Wang does what he does to avoid being turned on by the way Jiang Tian drinks water? After the enormous amount of focus on studies - and I mean ENORMOUS, there was no setup at all for him to do something that drastic. OK, so you're turned on. Go whack off and get it out of your system. Obviously there were deeper issues behind it, but those needed to be explored and not handwaved away with the sexy-water-drinking shorthand.

The could have entirely deleted the tiresome and totally unnecessary secondary couple plot and instead devoted that to Sheng Wang's descent into self-denial.

There's a scene a few eps before that where Sheng Wang explicitly names himself as Jiang Tian's home, which was one of the best scenes in the series and would have been the perfect place to end it. But unless you have a second season confirmed, then it's beyond frustrating to have devoted 12 weeks and hours to this to get absolutely nothing.

To be honest, what kept me from dropping the series was Andy Chen as their friend Gao Tian Yang, who I found enthralling. So hot and such a well-drawn and acted character.

Would I recommend it? No. Not unless a second season does come out and does resolve all the unresolved issues, which is ALL the issues since none of them at all are resolved. It doesn't sound to me like a second season is likely, and all those people, who appear to be most of the MDL audience, can blame themselves for watching pirated copies of this. That is stealing and it greatly diminishes the chances of BLs being made, so hang your heads in shame.

Leia Mais

Beautiful and Bleak

This is a beautiful film that doesn't frame anything in black & white. Max isn't a saint in a tough situation, Pan isn't a naive fool, and he lawyer isn't awful, as he may seem at first.

Characters do manufacture self-serving justifications for their actions, but many of them are at the mercy of their circumstances.

There's not much I can say without spoiling, but this is a beauiful film that is quite dark, but with an ember of hope that some of the love we invest in others can bear fruit and make a world of despair bearable.

Klong is fantastic in this, and while his role is small, Prince is quite affecting as a young teen. Tang does a wonderful job playing Pan as a man who sees the world more clearly than it seems and soldiers on anyway.

Highly recommended, but save something fluffy to watch afterward. Try the same director's Country Boy.

Leia Mais

This is both good and awful in a really confusing yet entertaining way, and it has heart.

First Few Episodes:

At the beginning, most of the humor in this is dependent on homophobia. Once again, all the characters "straight" except for one openly gay person who has a woman's voice (it's even explicitly stated it's a woman's voice) and touches the main character inappropriately whenever he's within range.

I don't understand why a genre that is about male-male love has to use homophobia for humor. It's dangerous to promote the that gay = predatory woman in a man's body and that homosexuality is a choice.

There are way too many scenes that flashback to the previous scene, as if we can't retain info from 30 seconds ago. This happens constantly - by the end of the second episoode it already felt like I'd rewatched this three times.

So far, this is a regressive checklist of tropes with no originality or anything of interest except for how the two mains look shirtless, which is admittedly impressive.

Remaining Episodes:

I actually dropped it but a friend here convinced me to give it another chance. I did, and it did get better, in a both "so bad it's good" way as well as in actually good ways. The homophobia fell away - except for one character's father, but that's OK as it was part of the plot. However, it does involve violent assault which is handwaved away with a brief apology. "Sorry I tried to beat your kid to death". "It's OK, he lived."

Here's the confusing part: The plot revolves around one of the characters being a great singer. But the actor is a terrible singer (or is acting a terrible singer). And the song he writes must be intentionally awful - the lyrics are about someone's mother selling chicken rice before she switches to clothing - so I'm not sure what they're aiming for. Also, most of the characters burst out in song at least once, usually sad ballads, which is hard to take seriously, but these are generally sung, I wouldn't say well, but not awful, either. Maybe I'm just putting too much thought into it.

The acting of the main characters is good, the pairings all have chemisty, and the two leads are very hot, individually and together (and the villain is really, really hot), which is what made me endure this - if you're not enjoying the series but find them appealing, I might suggest watching with judicious FF - you won't miss much as their romance doesn't really have much to do with the plot, i.e. although the romance itself has a story, it doesn't really connect to the main story about the band and male cheerleading club. There are side couples, but they are also not connected to the story, so you can fairly easily follow the couples you're interested in.

The main couple have a scene towards the end that is... steamy. Not porn-ike, it's quite romantic, but yikes, you won't be disappointed. And almost a BL first, they don't wake up fully clothed the next morning! The enormous size difference between them is super-cute. The smaller one has to get on his tppy-toes to kiss the tall one. And yet, it's not the formulaic seme/uke thing - in fact it's a comedic point that people keep asking them - they're both just... guys. In fact the small one is a much superior athlete and very feisty.

Also unusually, there is humor in this that's actually funny - most of the actors have good comic timing. I'd say overall that I recommend this - it's a little too much of three series rolled into one, and the story could have used a lot more focus, but the actors are not holding back and really commit. There's a lot of heart in this that overcomes its shortcomings.

Leia Mais

Ugh. Painful.

Like many Filipino BLs, this one preached at us in an incredibly heavy-handed way in order to teach us life lessons that we really don't need.

The plot centers around Mario, yet another 12-year old girl trapped in a man's body who meets Jethro, a narcissistic asshole who lives in NYC at a party who is horrible, but because this is a BL, we know he'll instantly transmute into a wonderful guy and everyone will forget his inexcusable borderline-psycho behavior at the beginning.

Which of course happens. They go on, I believe, three dates, and thenJethro goes home and Mario pines for him for THREE YEARS, because he's an emotional infant and is unable to get over someone he barely knows. Later on, they get in contact, and Mario dumps his wonderful boyfriend Arnold in order to go visit Jethro, who, incidentally has a long-term boyfriend, in the hopes they will get together. It's not in the cards due to an almost ridiculous tragic external circumstance that involves someone who's into style and fashion not just shaving his head like a normal person would, and Mario goes home, years pass, and it's implied that Arnold shows up at the end to take him back.

Arnold is played by Ron Angeles, who has what I would have to call "it". He's attractive without being gorgeous, nice body without being chisled perfection, charming but unassuming personality, that adds up to a very compelling sum - it's hard to find people that don't love this guy, and he always seems to steal anything he's in. Jomari Angeles is adorable and a decent actor, but stuck in a terrible role playing a character so irritating you WANT him to suffer for his stupidity and immaturity.

Jethro is... there. The writing made him too awful at the beginning and the series wasn't long enough nor was the couple complelling enough (or at all) for me to ever care what happened to them.

The love scene was the worst I've ever seen. Jethro unhinged his jaw and attempted to swallow Mario whole, while Mario, oblivious to the danger, looked like he'd just chugged a bottle of pure lemon extract. It was about as sexy as either love scene in Pink Flamingos.

So what's the moral of the story? Seize the day and if you develop an unhealthy infatuation with someone you don't know who lives halfway across the planet, drop everything and abandon all your life goals to be with him. Otherwise you'll regret it and dump your perfect boyfriend to fly halfway across the world for no apparent reason to have a discussion you could have facetimed, but you were hoping to steal him from his long-term boyfriend because your a narcissistic asshole who hurts everyone around you. I guess the unintended moral of the story is that there is no God, or a comet would have struck the party in the first episode and spared everyone the misery of this story.

Story: 3 - pretentious and unbelievable, might have worked if Mario were 14, but not man in his mid-20s. Heavy-handed moralism that backfires.
Acting: 6 - Both Angeles were good, with Jomari stuck with a terrible character that he did his best with, probably about as good as anyone could have done with that material. Andrew Gan was very convincing as an asshole, but a little dull as a nice guy.
Music: 6.5 - not intrusive, but didn't really do much to enhance the series.
Rewatch: 1 - you'd have to threaten to electro-shock me slowly to death to force me to rewatch this. Fortunately it's short enough that I might survive a second viewing, but I'd still have to think about it.
Overall: 4.5 - I want to find something positive to say about this, but other than that they cast Ron Angeles, I can't think of anything, and even there they mutilated his hair.

Leia Mais

It started out well, the last third is awful.

The first few episodes of this are really cute and wonderful. And then it drags, and drags, and drags a little more, then an evil ex is dropped into the story really late in the game, although at least for once it was a male ex, and not the cliche scheming female.

The main characters stop interacting at all a little more than halfway through, and so the ending is sudden and not built up to, and it also makes no sense.

The story is dependent on failure of communication so implausible that it will just make you sigh with exhaustion. There are 6 other characters that want them to get together, that somehow fail to bridge the gap between them, and the solution is so bizarre and convoluted that the only reaction is "hunh?"

Positives: The cuteness of the first few eps. It ends when they don't have to share a room anymore, so if you want to imagine they get together at that point and live happily ever after, that's a good place to drop the series, instead of suffering through the rest.

Hank Wang is so cute I can't stand it. Then he takes a shower and he's so hot I can't stand it. I love this man. The other men in this are attractive too, but not like him. When Yu Zhen reveals when he fell for him, he gives a reason that is incompatible with what we've seen earlier, but it makes 100% sense, even though it's less romantic.

The side couple is cute, but a little too self-consciously so, and the hair ruffling is starting to grate on my nerves - it's infantilizing, as if ukes aren't useless enough as they are. The straight couple is there.

If they had cut it down to 6-8 eps and left out the ex, this could have been delightful - but it declined from the show I most looked forward to each week to a reliable disappointment. The situation already had enough drama built into it and didn't need anymore, but BLs can never let characters and relationships develop - they just trip and catch one another and stare at each other until they're in love, then have to get past obstacles to be together.

Then the special episode happened. You would hope in an epilogue that you'd get to see the main couple interacting as a couple - or I would have been happy with a Behind the Scenes. But instead we got backstory entirely about the ex, and got 30 seconds of awkward interaction between the main couple with a kiss you might see between children playing, while Hank leans stiffly away from Aaron as if he's being made to do something he didn't want to do.

I gave this a 5 even though the "suggested overall" was 4.5, It was actually higher before the special ep, but that knocked down the story slightly and reduced the rewatchability to almost nothing. Maybe I'd go back and rewatch Hank's shower scene, but that's about it.

Leia Mais

This series may surprise you.

The production quality is not good - but it must be very difficult to film in the middle of Manlia slums like that and on a zero budget. It wasn't terrible either, and there were a few scenes that were given intensity by the way they were shot. I was shocked at the scene where Nico leaves home - I wasn't prepared for that level of instensity and skill at delivering it.

There are precious few serious trans characters with important roles - this production merits special attention for this.

The acting is not great in most cases, but LJ Russel as Prince and Edz Bonggastar as Miray are standouts. LJ has a very natural delivery, and an effortless sexiness that you probably can't learn - he just has "it". Edz really commits - I'm not sure how she'd be at subtle scenes, but she can deliver the power where it's needed.

The plot - well, not sure there was one. It's a little like a docudrama and the ending is a little "hunh?" but there's a sequel that I presume resolves a lot of issues.

While poverty is extremely convincingly portrayed, class difference wasn't. The "rich" kid lives in squalor and has zero manners or refinement - that was odd, especially since the poor orphan Prince is so aristocratic - if he were a real prince it wouldn't surprise me.

Unlike the usual fantasy BL about "1st world problems", this does not sugarcoat how awful it just be to be LGBTQ+ and living in poverty in a conservative society. It's very powerful how people in desperate circumstances are able to find happiness wherever they can. If you're looking for a "standard-issue BL", this is not it, but it does deliver some of the types of heartwarming scenes you would want - and unfortunately a couple of the silly tropes as well, although that's mostly in the first episode.

It does feel a little like the production ran out of steam and gave up at the end - it felt like there were two or three more episodes that were planned but skipped - I'm guessing COVID caused a serious interruption - you can tell something happened by how completely different Prince looks in the last ep - so I'm being patient and waiting for the follow-up series.

The low production quality is unfortunate, but if you give it a chance you'll see that there's passion to this project and a perspective you don't really see in any other BL. I'm looking forward to this crew's future projects.

It's hard to rate this. I almost feel like there should be a scale for mainstream professional productions and DIY projects like this. This is definitely on the higher end of that category.

The OST is unusually good.

Leia Mais

Wasted Time

I'll start with a positive - the actors are really cute, and the guy playing Ohara is talented, with good subtlety of expression, and his eyes are beyond stunning. The guy playing Yamato is less impressive, although I doubt that's his fault as he was clearly directed to act like a manga character, which didn't work in live action. It rarely does.

The writing is abyssmal, stuffed with every possible cliche, and lazy beyond belief, with EVERY SINGLE important conversation or almost-kiss interrupted, often by the very people trying to get them together. This happened several times per episode, to the point I stopped caring and wondered where Godzilla is when you need him.

When everything is driven (or rather tha brakes applied) by ridiculous, contrived external events, some unbelievably coincidental - as if Tokyo is so small that you can't go anywhere without running into someone that wil ruin your relationship - there is no character development or organic development of the relationship, which was already there because of the childhood friends cliche. The only thing about this that I liked is that Yamato knew Ohara liked him, but consciously tried to deny to himself that he knew because he was afraid it would mess up their friendship.

I get that this is a chaste high-school drama, but there's a point where something is so devoid of heat that it's hard to understand why they should change their status as best friends. There are a couple of kisses, which were awful and destroyed by the obession with cliches, so that Yamato always had to have his eyes wide with shock, even when he was expecting to be kissed, which made it come off as vaguely non-consensual - not so much so that it was disturbing, but it left them totally without any quality that made it something I wanted to watch.

This is frustrating and ultimately boring and is the last JBL I will ever attempt to watch. I would pass, altough most otherpeople seemed to like it.

Leia Mais

Abyssmal

I won't bore you with a long review, but this is the dullest, most pointless BL I've seen. The acting is non-existent, the plot is pedestrian, the whole thing is filmed on an iPhone, the editing is incompetent, the sound is poor, and there's no ending. It just... stops. There's a card that says it will be continued, but as far as I know it's over. There are scenes that are shot so poorly that there are characters that I didn't even realize were there until they spoke.

The central relationship doesn't really do anything - until suddenly it does a LOT, and while I think the love scene is supposed to be consensual, the way it's filmed and the way the characters act afterwards, it's a bit questionable, although I think that might just be the total lack of acting. I will say that the main character has a surprisingly beautiful body when you finally get to see it, and he's cute when he smiles, which is like twice.

I can't recommend this at all.

Leia Mais

Not the worst think I've ever seen.

This series had potential that was never realized. It had a fairly talented cast - including Kaleb Ong, one of the best actors in BL, Axl Romeo, and RR Roque, who was a surprise.

It had some interesting story ideas, like a minister who has an interesting night job, interesting class difference issues, an unusual, mildly creepy, but ultimately engaging sibling relationship, and portraying an effeminite gay character in a very positive way (and for the first time in human history, had an uke who was taller than his seme - this counts as a major miracle).

But many of these plot points went nowhere, like the minister performs his night job once and then it's never referred to again. The class and power dynamics were never really explored.

I think there are three main problems with this series.

- The script is not good. It wanders all over the place and needed a lot more discipline and to link the stories together better - and build up to issues rather than springing them out of nowhere. It needed to focus on the themes it introduced, instead of handwaving away all the conflicts.

- The directing drains all the energy out of the production, not to mention the actors. Meet My Angel was not good in most regards, but the acting, especially Kaleb's, was spectacular - maybe the best single performance in a BL of all time. Here, he's... there. In My Chinito Prince, Axl was compelling and sexy - here he's... there.

- The editing. The series wandered all over the place, with strange scenes included and critical ones left out - like there's a critical conversation between Omeng and Lemuel in the last episode... that apparently happened offscreen, because there's a sudden and total reversal in their relationship that came out of nowhere.

The technical qualities of the production like sound weren't great, but they were above average for a DIY like this and adequate. The OST was good, but it sounds like all the other Filipino BL OSTs and is used way too much to the point it gets irritating.

I don't think I can recommend this series - there's no payoff for the investment, and the actors (epecially the ones that drew to watch this) are poorly utilized and give their least compelling performances to date.

Leia Mais

This is truly awful. In the most boring way.

I'll start with the good. The music is good. The cast is pretty good. Noh will probably seem lifeless to you, but I think that's bad directing, not bad acting. I think he's capable of displays of restrained and subtle emotion, but you only get to see it once or twice. The main couple are undoubtedly cute together, and they have strong chemistry. Bbomb has a really, really hot body and he's very sexy. Jin is adorable and his smile is really something.

The bad: There is no plot. None at all. The characters merely run in circles the entire series, and it's hard to convey how completely unexaggerated that is. Do you know how many times people get injured playing football? I don't - I lost count. (That's slightly exaggerated - but Jin does get injured more than once, and it serves exactly the same plot function both times.)

There is only one source of drama in this series, and it's jealousy. Both characters are endlessly jealous over the other so much as being in the same room as anyone else - girls, boys, houseplants, they're jealous of everything. It's always a misunderstanding, and the characters never, ever discuss it - they just retreat somewhere, sulk, and refuse to answer the phone or communicate in any way. With no exaggeration, the number of times this happens is so great, often several times in a single episode, that I can't tell you how many - really, I'm not kidding.

Bbomb is so psychotically jealous that Jin should really run for his life, because he's going to end up strangled to death in a fit of rage. Although the chances are 50/50 he'll be able to escape if Bbomb is currently recovering from a football injury.

There are a lot of supporting characters in this, and none of them serve any purpose whatsoever. If you're here to see Kaownah & Turbo, prepare for disappointment. There are hints that Turbo likes Kaownah, but it never goes anywhere. At all. And Kaowah is surprisingly terrrible in this - I think again, very strange directing. Ball, played by the actor who is the fujoshi's brother in Oxygen, appears two or three times and one of the support characters is smitten by him (and Ball is almost fatally cute), but nothing happens. At all. He's not even in the finale. Boss, who played Kao in Oxygen is in this a lot more than I was expecting, and he's wonderful in a completely opposite role (reserved, manly, aristocratic - I would love to see him play a villain), but it's not enough. The guy who plays That in Manner of Death (the hot guy with the motorbike) does nothing significant.

I'd say about 75% of the run time is characters eating and drinking, or traveling to a from eating and drinking. The other 25% is people sulking in jealousy and implausible lack of communication.

All the friends have a master plan to get Jin & Bbomb together, but it makes absolutely no sense - it's totally incoherent and illogical, and appears to be more or less randomly sabotaging the two endlessly until... they get together?

Jin is so wracked by internalized homophobia that not only will he not allow Bbomb to tell anyone they're dating, he won't even let Bbomb hug him, even when they're alone in private - until the final episode, when he does something so totally outrageous and out of character your mouth will hit the floor - let's just say it involves involuntary outing, and if the person in question didn't already know, it would have been the worst thing any character has ever done in a BL (other than villains).

There is not one tired trope that isn't stuffed into this. If one of the main characters hugs someone, the other will show up at just that moment and misunderstand. If someone has a drop of alcohol, vomit and a piggyback ride will result. Playing football? Guess what happens? It often feels like a checklist they need to get through each ep.

Bbomb's house in Chiang Mai is so gigantic that it doesn't fit in a wide frame shot - seriously, it's not a mansion, maybe not even a palace, but an entire city-complex. If I were to guess, I'd say at least 2,000 sq m. And two people live there. With no domestic help. What is the point of this absurdity?

Despite the main couple's chemistry, they never really get anywhere, and the ending of 2gether is an orgy of pornographic debauchery compared to how this ends. There's a stuffed animal involved. And nobody f@#$s it, which would have been more interesting and satisfying than what happens.

When you finish the first episode, you'll say "This guy is too negative - it's not THAT bad." When you finish the last episode, you'll say "why didn't this a$$hole warn me it was this bad?" because it's much worse than I can convey in words.

Given the above, a four rating may seem high, but the quality of the production is good (other than the directing and writing), and the actors did as well as anyone could with this awful, miserable script, and I can at least say you're never without eye candy, so I think a four is reasonable. I can't imagine ever rewatching even one scene in this. I don't think there was even a gratuitous shower scene to go back to.

Leia Mais

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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