All posts by PPBongi

Korean Reviews

“The Nameless Season” Series Review (Ep.1 to 6)

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This is a sweet journey if you are drawn to sweet genteel cliché friends-to-lovers romance narratives. All the characters are sweet. The story is sweet. The outcome is sweet. But be forewarned. You might slip into a diabetic coma from watching this rather short series because of all the sweetness that is pumped into your blood from this saccharin novella. However, I cannot say that it is not curiously entertaining, for it is. Mainly because of the symmetry between the actors. While there is nothing in this series you have not seen in other similar versions before, perhaps done much better and deeper than here, there is still enough hitherto to grab your attention.

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Thai Reviews

“Dating Game” Series Review (Ep.1 to 12)

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I loved this series! It has charm, wit, sweetness in all the right spots, and a bunch of endearing human warmth. While not overly saccharine, it is also not traumatizing. Curiously pensive and reflective, it has all the elements of a most believable love story told in soft, subtle gentle tones that simply make you feel good all over. There are two love stories, actually. Both are surprisingly compelling. While the various protagonists are interconnected, their individual love stories take very different paths to fruition. Both end up being (well, more-or-less) plausible and credible sequences.

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Filipino Reviews

“Hermoso” Series Review (Ep.1 to 10)

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The best way to describe this series is to define it in terms of a psychological disorder. It is schizophrenic. It has all the symptoms of this condition. It is befuddling, full of mood swings, capricious, shows severe personality changes, weird periods of agitation with obvious emotional disorders as well, and psychological instability throughout. I could go on, but you get the point. It is not tethered to thinking, operating, or behaving clearly. The story is an incoherent mess yet sometimes just a lot of fun to watch. It was entertaining for some time but then lost its direction in the end as it did not seem to know how to conclude the story.

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Korean Reviews

“The Killer Next Door” Series Review (Ep.1 to 60)

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Yet again, this is another example of a potentially good BL series that went awry. There is a lot of good acting in this series. The issue is, it was wasted in a noxious story. I want to cry over the content (or lack thereof) that is being used to construct BL stories. While I know there ought to be no topics off limits, I do wish more positive representations of ‘Boys Love’ could be portrayed. Or at least ones that are not always so pessimistic in nature and content and/or surrounded by such ugly and negative dimensions. Generally speaking, Korean BL tend to be dark and broody; this one was exceptionally morose and despairing, sprinkled with a mixture of odd personas that sometimes worked. And sometimes not.

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Filipino Reviews

“Love at First Spike” Series Review (Ep.1 to 8)

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Honestly, series that have recently been produced by the Philippines centering around BL have been shall we say less than stellar. So, I was not optimistic about this current one. But I was indeed pleasantly surprised and found this story to be exceptionally well done. It is not just entertaining, it is contemporary, relevant, and quite consequential.

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Thai Reviews

“Reset” Series Review (Ep.1 to 10)

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I am sure that I shall have my official passport granting me entry into the BL world revoked for this review, as I know this series is universally praised as exceptional. However, I honestly was not enamored with this series. I have a difficult time with movies and series trying to make gay life ‘perfect’. This even went beyond that. It gave an individual an opportunity for a second chance to relive his life. A do-over. What the series called a reset. But frankly, I was unsure why he deserved a do-over nor did I think he deserved one. It was simply baffling. He reached a pinnacle in this life for which most of us will never accomplish or attain or even dare to dream about. He found out that individuals around him were nefarious and murderous. Too late. My cynical and questioning mind then asked: So what and why him? What was so special about Armin?

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Reviews

“Delivery Guy” Series Review (Ep.1 & 2)

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Raw, gritty, and astonishingly bold. These are some of the adjustives that can be used to describe this parable from Nigeria. A country certainly not known for its embracement of homosexuality. In fact, it is just the opposite. This short series is both a BL and a LGBTQ+ saga, virtually impossible to separate one from the other. Its underpinning is as old and familiar as gayness itself. The story itself is abound with tropes and cliches about the vileness of queerness. But here, it is the way it is presented that makes it so unique. The protagonists are not familiar to the usual world of BL. They are not teenagers and are Black from a country steep in religious disapproval of gay behavior from both the Muslin and Christian faiths, compounded by a deep cultural conservatism heritage against anything resembling an attachment between two men.

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Vietnamese Reviews

“My Sweet Brother-in-law” Series Review (Ep.1 to 5)

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There is so much to unpack in this short series. It is a prodigious tale as well. Initially, the way it was presented felt as if it might be a light, even comedic tongue-in-cheek story. Full of fun. But true to the nature of Vietnamese BLs, it emerges into realness. The human drama becomes honest, sincere, and relatable especially because of what happens when we simply are unable to truly be ourselves. It is a story of gayness and the inability to be free and open about who you are and the person you love. The Vietnamese have mastered the perfection of being able to portray these emotions with such intensity.

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Taiwanese Reviews

“Fight for You” Series Review (Ep.1 to 12)

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Once I completed this series, I asked myself what was the premise of this series? And I honestly could not figure one out. It is your standard formulaic BL, full of tropes, cliches, customary setups, and unremarkable contrived crisis. But through at least some portions of this series, I found myself being avidly entertained chiefly because of the charming effect of the two main leads. The remainder, however, not so much because it was your standard flat setup.

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