When I started this series, I was convinced it was going to be my favorite BL of all time. And for two months or so, it was. The characters talk out their issues and seem very realistic. The friend group is a vibe and is consistently vibing. They play a lot but they also work a lot, and hard. They have aspirations and pasts. They're very well-rounded. The amount of cute and the way it was done had me damn near to tears (the confession scene with TanFang? Cant even think about it without tearing up. Peak cute in the most non-suffocating way.) Even though the opening premise kind of fell to the wayside faster than I expected considering the amount of episodes, I wasnt mad about it. The acting was believable to good at times and I was enjoying myself immensely. A lot of past tense there.

Somewhere around the halfway mark, the episodes started to drag. The plot thinned, which was impressive since it was never thick to begin with. Each episode seemed to contain more "cute moments of X CP" reels and less story. Montage, montage, montage. Peem went from refreshing me to irritating me with his back and forth, push and pull. The slow burn of it all really got annoying because it wasnt actual slow burn, it was just confusing. Phum and Peem kiss like four times, and circle each other constantly, and obviously like each other, but then, 75% through the series, Phum is going to START flirting with Peem?? What were the last 11 episodes for??? They'd BEEN flirting since episode one. Constantly. At first, We Are seemed mature and fun (which is a hard combo to achieve tbh), but it started to feel more juvenile than anything. That's not to say it's bad, but it's certainly nowhere near as good as it begun.

Personally, I dont care about slow or fast burn, or NC scenes, or kisses, or what have you— I care about plot and, even for slice of life, this didn't have enough of it to warrant 16 episodes. I enjoy watching relationship building in context with plot. This series should have been, at absolute max, 13 episodes. Episode 13 is when I finally felt truly tired of it (specifically, I felt like I was forcing myself to tune in), but after watching that much I figured why not hold out to the end? There are several episodes that feel like filler. Or at least primarily filler with one plot point to sticky tape the whole thing together. Between that and the amount of times I got deja vu thinking something had been handled only for the characters to say, "nah lets run this shit again actually," I was hoping they'd jam a lot more plot into the last three episode, even if it felt rushed, but no dice.

I am halfway through episode 15 and I gotta drop this. Which is insane considering how far I got, but I'm barely even watching anymore. Its boring. I love slice of life. I enjoy mature characters. Tin Tem Jai is one of my favorite series— I definitely don't need things to go crazy to have a good time, but it just isn't holding my attention at all. It feels like somethings missing but I cant articulate what. Its like trying to remember a smell– uncanny, frustrating, and really difficult to explain. Tbh, the only characters I still love and might return to watch the rest for is TanFang. If the later episodes were replaced with a more in depth showing of how they got together, I wouldnt complain, but as is, We Are ended up just being kinda mediocre to me. I recommend the hell out of the first half and do not recommend the second half literally at all.