Love is a powerful thing. It is powerful enough to bridge generations, erase hate, and overcome prejudices. If we let it. Love is powerful enough to bring two people together so intimately that it’s hard to tell where one begins and the other ends.

Thus is the story that the Thai BL Century of Love tells.

Starring Daou Pittaya (San) and Offroad Kantapon (Vee), Century of Love follows a devoted man named San who spends a hundred years waiting for the woman he loves to reincarnate after she died to protect him only for her to return as a man named Vee. This begins an unforgettable love story that becomes much more about who we are and less about the bodies we’re born with.

While I’ll admit I initially had trouble becoming immersed in San and Vee’s story, I found that, with time, San’s love and his interactions with Vee aged well. Ironically, a story about a man who spends 100 years not aging and trying to rediscover his first love becomes a love story that ages slowly on screen before suddenly capturing the heart.

Offroad and Daou have a unique chemistry that translates into every work they’re involved in. Whether it’s their real-life friendship or their ability to capture human emotion that makes them shine so bright, they always produce magic together. Century of Love is no different.

My first impression review of Century of Love didn’t hold back on the parts of the series I struggled with, but while some of those struggles remained throughout, all of the cons were canceled out by a passionate cast who came together around two central characters caught in a whirlwind of feelings who refuse to let go of each other.

There is power in that.

From homophobia to marriage and love, Century of Love traversed generations and showed how someone’s perception of life and love, no matter how many years they’ve lived, can be changed. Love isn’t dependent on how a person looks or what gender a person is born as; it’s dependent on our hearts and who our hearts connect with.

And that’s what makes Century of Love shine—the love story.

What I wrote in my first impression bears repeating. Century of Love is a love story worth getting lost in. The counterbalance between desperately holding onto a love you can’t let go of and learning to let go of something that is meant to change over time is beautifully done with San and Vee’s characters and their struggle. And I found myself much more emotionally involved than I thought I would be after the first two episodes.

Enough so that I cried. Twice.

Love is blinding, but it also opens the eyes. Century of Love took its time finding its footing, but once it did, it didn’t hold back on the punches it offered. And while the series ends happily, there is also a thread of sadness in the story it tells about death and life and how our choices often color who we become.

My favorite part of the series, however, is its ambiguous ending, how we never truly know who Vad’s reincarnation actually is: Vee or Vad? In the end, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that love and perceptions can change, which promises that future generations will have the potential to find freedom in the love their hearts lead them to pursue, no matter what others think.

And that’s beautiful. Poignant. Compelling.

For a series that allows viewers to fall in love twice while exploring the transformation of love itself, check out Century of Love now on Gagaoolala.

Rating- 4 out of 5