This Pinoy BL is everything one can wish for in the genre. It’s witty, inclusive, empowering, shows the power of solidarity and strength in numbers that is fundamental to the queer community, while also highlighting the challenges most societies still face with backwards thinking homophobes and transphobes. While queer representation is quite high, there are rising sentiments of queerphobia throughout the world, even in the West and it is important to continue to highlight and uplift queer voices that are too quickly erased in the world, as was done to Baylan Nalundasan in Marahuyo.

“Marahuyo Project” tells the story of King (Adrian Lindayag), a headstrong student activist who moves to Manila to a traditional sea town of Marahuyo, where people are extremely religious, conservative, superstitious and ignorant. King quickly realizes how backwards the town is by their treatment of Venice (Ian Villa), a transwoman who is outright called slurs in class, with the Priest not feigning any defense for her. King is one of the first people to ever stand up for Venice and this solidarity and support emboldens Venice into proudly claiming her identity. King and Venice decide to start the first LGBTQIA+ organization in their school WarSu, despite it being clear that the Dean and the priest are against this.

In order to start his organization, King must get the student council’s approval. However, the school President, Ino (Neo France Garcia) seems to also be interested in maintaining the status quo, and King must convince him that their cause is worth his support. As the two get to know each other despite their differences, it becomes clear that they are not as different as they thought they were.

King is able to recruit Lorie (Nour Hooshmand), the mayor’s daughter into their club, and with her support, the organization gets some notoriety, however, this even further opens them up to abuse and bullying from the school. Lorie’s best friend Lili (Yani Villarosa) is reluctant to join the organization at first, however, because of Lorie’s support of King and Venice, she becomes comfortable enough to open up to her about her being intersex. When it is discovered that Lili is intersex, the townspeople call her a monster and demon, and accuse her and the other queer people for being responsible for the fisherman’s low harvest.

The series shows us how easier it is to live your truth when you have a support system and like-minded people around you, however, sometimes that alone is not enough and it is important that the world and people around us make the world more comfortable by letting go of their ignorant beliefs. Venice’s friend Christina didn’t make it because of a hurtful world and this put so much fear in someone like Archie (AJ Sison) who turned to religion to tone down and deny a part of himself, and at the same time, although he is a victim of circumstances, his actions cause harm to his friends, particularly Venice.

By conducting interviews, trying to figure out the oral history of Marahuyo, King, Venis, Lorie and Ino discover that the town’s history has been greatly distorted and Ino’s family are not the heros of Marahuyo as is believed, but rather a queer poet named Baylan Nalundasan. This revelation crushes Ino, but also breaks the shackles that his history and name has chained him to. He becomes more open to looking inward and admitting that he is gay. Although Ino admits it to himself, to King and even to his parents, he is not immediately brave enough to have the whole town know about it, and this creates tension and conflict between Ino and King, as King does not believe that someone who can deny their love would not hurt him in the future. King is careful not to force Ino into coming out and assures him that he does not need to if he is not ready.

Although the gang isn’t ultimately successful in their goals and persuading the board to approve their organization, it is apparent that change is coming to Marahuyo. King manages to reassure his mother that her acceptance and the acceptance of those he loves is what matters most in a world full of hatred, and his mother supports him despite her own fears of harm befalling him due to the anger and hatred of people. Ino’s father, who is bisexual himself is supportive of Ino and wants him to be true to himself, and his mother comes around to supporting her, although her homophobia and biphobia do cause her to be unnecessarily hurtful towards her family, particularly Ino’s father who even admits that regardless of his attraction to men, he truly loves her.

The audience can easily tell that this show is a passion project because of how heavily it is influenced by compassion, understanding, reassurance and is educational. Although we are aware of the LGBTQIA+ community, very few of us know about people who are Intersex, what that entails and the problems they face, and Marahuyo Project highlighted how backwards and ignorant the reactions people often have. The move away from showing gay men in masculine and macho bodies to centering flamboyant femme gay men is also important in fighting against the respectability politics and body politics rampant in the gay community. While the romance was sweet and expected, the greatest moving force of Marahuyo project is the friendship and solidarity that shines more than anything. This is such a comfort watch and highly recommended.

Rating- 4 out of 5

Streaming on- Anima Studios YouTube Channel