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.

Leia Mais

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.

Leia Mais

At first I couldn't get through the second episode. Jean AGAIN? WTF? Why on earth do all these crappy dramas have to put a girl between the main BL couple? Especially if it's the second season! Why can't gay characters just be gay? Or if they're bi, or pan, or whatever they are, not be so indecisive and self-destructive. Being bi doesn't mean you have to hop back and forth between two different relationships, it just means you can love people of more than one gender. How can anyone invest anything into Tee and Fuse after the absolute emotional torture Fuse put Tee through? Also, how can you have any respect for Tee for putting up with any of this? He should have walked away and found someone else a long time ago...

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.

Leia Mais

Great acting, mediocre everything else. Awful editing.

I feel like this series isn't aimed at me, because I didn't think it was all that. The acting is wonderful, and the characters well-drawn. Even the minor roles are really well-acted.

The story, however, is pedestrian, melodramatic, and stuffed with cliches. The ganster angle was fine in the beginning, because we see what Qian had to do for his family - but when it comes back later, it's just unnecessary drama that drops out of the sky, and ruined the organic progression of the main relationship. It should have ben Yuan's absence abroad that made Qian confront his feelings, and it seemed like it was written that way - but for some reason the author didn't trust us to buy it and threw in a ridiculous plot thread where Yuan had to behave uncharacteristically idiotic (what on earth was his plan?). And the endless time-jumping - the first refuge of an author that can't imagine a coherent plot.

As for cliches, it's got it all, from suggestive seatbelting to hair blowdrying. At least the obligatory 30-year old with a critical illness cliche was written in a way that made sense, and they didn't overdo it.

The editing is just terrible, and nearly ruined the series. By Ep 9 I didn't care about the series anymore and stopped craving it like I had for the first 8 - there is not one emotionally important scene that isn't mutilated by an endless series of flashbacks played to the maudlin theme song, which is good. Occasssionally. Not stuffed in every conceivable moment and far beyond.

There's a very, very important scene in Ep 11 that shocked me how badly it was ruined, and I was thinking "this is just me, and I'm sure everyone else loved it", but I discovered in the forum that my opinion was almost universally held, which was a nice surprise - I'd hate to think I'm alone in the world.

This could have been an 11/10 with less indulgent writing and a good editor. As it was, the actors managed to carry it - Qian was stoic, but not cartoonishly so (except when played for humor, which was effectively done), the Lili is not OTT silly and wasa a surprisingly nuanced character, which I attribute to the actress, the gangster leader was clearly a man who pretends to be more insane than he is for stragtegic reasons, again ably acted, and the actors playing the younger versions of the characters were first-rate as well, which was wonderful - I even felt a little cheated at first when the younger Yuan's time was up.

I would recommend this, and I think the majority of fans will give this a 9.5 or a 10, but it's an 8 for me. A 9.5 for the acting, a five for everthing else, and a 2 for the editing.

Leia Mais

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.

Leia Mais

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.

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

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.

Leia Mais

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.

Leia Mais

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.

Leia Mais

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.

Leia Mais

The story is fine if you can accept the premise. The acting is so-so - the main character spends almost the entirety of the story crying in a one-dimensional way. The music is utterly oppressive - to the point that if you're a non-Mandarin speaker you're better off turning downthe volume and just reading the story, because otherwise the crying and awful music will make you insane.

The vibe of the story is similar to Addicted/Heroin, but this is a bargain-basement version. The main guy is cute, but not in the transcendent way Timmy Xu is (I just felt a sledgehammer to the chest writing that, because he's so painfully beautiful).

I like that the evil girlfriend ends up being the exact opposite of that.

Anyway, it's only an hour & 10 minutes long, so if you don't like it, it's not like you've wasted a day of your life.

Leia Mais

Beautiful short story

This is a fairly economically-written story in which more happens than in some longer series, and with an emotional authenticity often sorely lacking in BL.

The reactions of the three characters are very realistic and age-appropriate, experiencing heratbreak, longing, jealousy, love, and especially loyalty in non-pathological ways. Loyalty is an important theme in the story, prioritizing it over attraction, and making it a primary characteristic to be attracted to. Poon has a fight with his best friend in which he even punches him, but it doesn't break up their friendship because the best friend understands Poon's motivation and even values it. It's obviously wrong to hit someone, but nobody, especially high school boys, has perfect self-control, and he apologizes and they discuss it like good and mature people.

It's a really beautiful story, wonderfully acted by very attractive boys and well filmed and edited. My only criticism is that there is too much flashback for such a short story. One is excusable as it's from the previous part, but there are others that are from the previous scene, which is tiresome and unnecessary. Also, Rachmaninoff needs royalties for the score, but it works well with the story.

I can highly recommend this - Mind Trio is batting 1,000 at this poiint.

Leia Mais

I wanted to love this so badly.

There is so much about this that's wonderful. The acting and cinematography are excellent.

That's a lot - and it's why I gave this a 7 instead of the 5.5 'suggested' rating. I like that this takes a more cinematic and sophistic approach to making a BL - this is not like a mainstream series where everyone is fantastically rich - the characters even take a train!

There is no way to escape comparison to I Told Sunset About You, which is another ambitious production about similar themes - I could watch that 100 times and was enthralled for every minute of it. The Yearbook was something to endure.

It's slow. I don't mind slow-pacing during scenes - in fact I prefer a scene that develops. The problem isn't the slowness of scenes, although they're really, really slow, it's the overall slowness of the plot and the reliance on flashbacks to fill time. I understand this is an expansion of a school project. It's not so much an expansion as an inflation. You will see the same scenes flashed back to many, many times - like a dozen or more - I'm not kidding. There are flashback scenes that have their own flashback scenes - I'm not joking, it happens many times.

Within scenes, the dialog is spoken in this unnatural slow and halting manner, with very long pauses and staring to the point that Bite Me seems rushed in comparison. Everyone moves very slowly, too. Like 90 year-olds. Heavily sedated 90-year olds. There's a scene were Nut takes a photo out of a drawer and sets it up on his desk. He opens the drawer so slowly I thought maybe he was afraid there was a bomb in it, then withdraws the photo really slowly, slowly places it on his desk, then writes a pointless letter that takes 5 minutes, and then he gives up and just calls Phob instead.

There is no point to this story. It's not about loss - there was an opportunity to delve into different types of loss and how you move on, but nope, just slow talking and flashbacks.

There is a scene where the main characters appear to have sex - offscreen, which is fine. But then the next day they behave exactly as they did before - there was no impact on their relationship, no discussion, it just disappeared and never happened again, and they resumed interacting like bro's. They even woke up fully-dressed and not even cuddling.

A little over halfway through, a character has to go somewhere for a few hours to take care of something life-changing. And the series comes to a screeching halt and there are three episodes that are almost entirely flashback. If you're expecting a fluffy ending, you're not getting one. It's not a sad ending, it's not really a happy ending, it just ends, as if the crew said "f@#$ it, this isn't going anywhere, let's just stop here." That sounds exaggerated, but you'll think I understated it if you watch this series.

The life-changing event is fairly dramatic, and it does result in a character signing a song for the other character (over the phone, all to flashbacks, including a flashback to someone else singing the same song - and with vocals, not just visual). No hug, no "I'm here for you", certainly nothing to indicate there's any romantic connection. The song isn't about loss or moving on, it's expression of unrelated feelings that he could have communicated 10 years prior but somehow never did, even though they had sex.

This is not a BL. It's a bromance. There is a kiss, once, miss-it-if-you-blink, and the main pair do seem to love each other, but it feels to me that it was a bromance with one kiss thrown in to make it a BL so they could market it to us and Mean's fan base. This feels like an attempt at a BL by straight guys who think m/m love is gross and so it's barely in here. This is the BL equivalent of interior "decor" that's all white walls, black leather furniture and a huge TV for video games and watching sports.

There is more time spent by straight characters discussing girls they like than there is of the main characters discussing their feelings for each other, which, incidentally, they do not do, ever, even once. They sing their feelings, which is nice (although twice it's over the phone), but we needed to see them interact like lovers. After high school, the main pair were rarely even in the same room together. Except in flashbacks.

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Story: 3. Superficial, lazy, manipulative, and designed to make sure the main characters interact as little as possible.

Acting: 9. The delivery of dialog was terrible, but that's not the actors' fault - they otherwise did an excellent job showing us what they feel, which makes the endless flashbacks mystifying. Why hire such good actors if you're not going to let them do the heavy lifing?

Music: 8.5. This was well-done. The original lyrics were good without being carried away, the singing was what you'd expect from non-professionals, although someone who's a better singer should have been cast for Phob. Anyway, one of the series' better qualities.

Rewatch value: 1. If you held a gun to my head, I would still not sit through this again. It's probably worth watching once, but there's nothing that would draw me back.

Leia Mais

Good, but some wasted potential

This is a different kind of BL, with complex characters that aren't caricatures or archetypes like most BL characters. Even the "villain" isn't a villain.

The acting is superb, although a bit uneven, with Kris & Porsche playing Dome and Vee with a searing intensity in a forbidden love storyline, Boom & Jump a bit one-note but cute as Saen and Aii, and Tae & Suar in the middle as Fah and Thorn.

The cinematography and art design are the best I've seen in a BL, including I Told Sunset about You - it was stunning enough to carry me through the weaker parts of the story.

Which brings me to to the biggest problem with the series, which is the writing and pacing. The story is too ambitious for 12 episodes and too much was attempted. Unfortunately, the expedient chosen to get through it was time jumps. The jumps totally deflated the most exciting couple, Dome and Vee, and their story just died and I lost interest in it. They skipped over all the key scenes, like Dome & Vee's respective denouments with Pan, parting for Saen & Aii, etc.

The final drama between the main couple was insufficiently set up, and while the emotion and charactization was complex, realistic, and well-executed, Thorn made too many decisions that didn't make very much sense for his character - there were things he did that are understandable in the moment, but not in the long term, like the communications breakdown with Fah.

And the finale was a huge disappointment - an entire episode where nothing happened wasted on what could have been much-needed development for the secondary couples. In the end, the total lack of passion between the characters undermined any sense I had that anyone was in love - they all interacted like friends, with pecks on the cheek going where a love scene belonged. Considering how dark and mature the themes of the series were, the junior-high level of the romance (and that's being generous) made the whole series fall flat for me. Dome & Vee's final scene is a LOL product placement - it was mouth-hanging-open shocking to see such an electric couple ending in such a pathetic way.

I'm not saying there needed to be sweat-soaked love sex scenes - Vee & Dome had scenes were they weren't even touching that could burn a house down (before they became wet cardboard). But at no point did any of the other two couples, or Vee & Dome after the first time jump, feel like romantic pairs. Fah & Thorn feel like their roles were written for brothers, not lovers, and Saen & Aii's romance was primary school from beginning to end, with Aii never ceasing to act like he was afraid of getting cooties from Saen. If you replaced them with 8-year olds, the story would work just the same.

I still gave it a high rating, but there's no excuse for this not being a 10 with all the superlative ingredients it had.

Story: 7 - High points for complex characterizations, but poor marks for continuity and failure to bring stories to convinving conclusions and jumping over resolutions with lazy and enervating time-jumps.

Acting: 9 - Of all the actors, the only ones that I long to see again are Kris & Porsche, preferably together. The others were decent, and would probably outshine most run-of-the-mill BL actors, but suffered in comparison to that superb pair.

Music: 7 - nothing special but did it's job.

Rewatch: 5 - I would rewatch Vee & Dome, but that's about it.

Overall: 8.5 This is higher than the suggested score, but there's no rating for "production values", and this was an 11/10. I would have rated it a 9.5 or 10 up until the first time jump, which led to a huge dropoff for the series - this was a very unfortunate decision.

Leia Mais