A warm blanket

This dramatisation is like a warm blanket in a cold winternight.
It might not be so warm initially but it wraps you and before you know it, you are prisoner by the comfort.

I cant go as far and say it is as aluring to the game, as the anime and manga is, but the end result about the emotional journey is similar. For a Chinese production I was impressed that the sound, fx or the storyline was actually good, compared to many other Chinese productions that gives (me at least) proper headache.

I still fell in love with the changes made, especially between Hikaru (Shi Guang) and Sai (Shu Jing), it really fits. Wont say more than that, apart that I recommend to read/watch the other versions, then you'll understand.
The blast from the past with cellular brands like Nokia and other quirks, really made this so charming.
I imagine it was very tricky to make it all from Chinese Pov but it was done smoothly and I didnt felt disturbed by it, even when I was re-watching HnG(anime version) parallel to this.

Also, I really liked the Fang Xu-character, which felt in all honesty more humble. Actually, come to think of it, almost all characters were a lot more humble here than any other versions.

The only "negative" is that this drama did not have an emotional impact as the other versions. It is not until ep30 and forth one begins to feel the need of tissues and after that, you may need an entire box or two.

Lastly;
I really love the tribute to HnG on the last episode, it made my heart bleed even more. Again, if you read/watch the other versions you'll understand.
And I absolutly salute they kept the lyrics to the OST utterly intact and so the melody.
Its a beautiful song and beautiful text.
I might come back and put in my feed the Japanese and the Chinese lyrics/versions at some point.

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Not all heroes wear capes

Overall, it was a decent show, good even.
What makes the rating drop like Titanic is the production or rather video editing.
I felt forced to fast-forward most of the episodes because of it and no show is considered a good enough should for good rating if you feel that need.

All things considered, I loved the diversity (even though it felt they tossed in a few foreigners just for the sake of it so they could be somewhat true to their claim about "regardless of gender or race").
As for the gender equality, well.. yeah, no, you can't quite compare, in all honesty.
It showed quite visible the gender difference in some of the games.

The last episode was one of the better ones, because it felt more honest and less scripted, because that is the second reason for low rating; it felt scripted a lot of times. Ep was more down to earth and to be honest, humble somehow.
Compared to the beginning as it felt like a huge brag-n-clown-fest.

I still recommend to watch this, but its not like up there.

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Fiat stole the show

It wasnt even a slow pace-pace on the maincouple it was non-existant pace between them.
Perhaps the script made it unnacessary hard?
I dont know but neither main couple nor the hetero-couple felt believable nor real.
Fiat however (yes I am biased) totally stole the show.
Un (Aun Napat Patcharachavalit) too, totally delivered despite his really young age.
FiatUn is a ship that felt more on point than anything else in the series. They had raw, cute, fluff, real and everything in between. I kept watching solely hoping for watch more of them and thankfully, they did have a lot of them, especially the last episodes.


Ah, as for kissing scenes; ok, it actually get a just barely 9-stars on that. All kisses were passionate enough to connect even the distance and slowness the maincouple had, but also any other couple.
The last kiss of the main couple was short but sweet, although I'd like to see a little bit more of skinship between them, considering all they struggles they went through.

The series is well worth watching but it's not a masterpiece.

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Good intensions gone bad

So, I had to quick rewatch 1-7 to be sure of my grading and yes, I can just barely give it a 7, actually I want to give it lower, but I keep it there.
Lets brake it down:

The story-flow begins good, then decent and eventually, downhill.
Sure, the story tocuhes some interesting delicate topics such as mental health, self-discovery, infidelity, death, covid-situation, identity crisis and domestical abuse; but perhaps they tried too hard to show too much?

So the characters:
The fact they put Yana and Leo, the exes as the biatches of the story, is just tad cliche. But I like the broken character Leo is. Finally something of the typical in BL-stories.

Olan- Oh Olan, the passive accepting sideline hero that was just there for decoration.
Or icing if some like him.
Yana is the typical rolls-eyes-bitch. No worth the screentime nor the ink..

Ben- Actually, he is quite broken and I like it. Imo, he is the utterly star, from episode 1-7. Acting was totally ok but the character was good.

Jim- Everything was just wrong with Jim. Even in his few heroic moments here and there, he was just an ass, to put it short.


Lets now bake this into a marvelous cake of mush, because it was like just that. It LOOKED wonderful, the idea was good, but excecution was like a cute loved one that cant cook for squat trying to bake.
You eat it anyway with a smile.
A for effort.

The OST was good though and there was plenty of eyecandies.

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A masterpiece needed to be watched by everyone

As title stated, regardless if you like BL or not, this is a must see drama.
Not only it is well made, cinographically, but the cast's acting, music and everything is utterly top notch.

At first, on first episode I was a bit skeptical, it is not quite the regular Thai-drama nor regular BL-drama for that matter. It is, despite portraiting young people in their late High school year, a very mature production with a delicate and poetic way to showcase sensitive topic as self-love, identity crisis and personal growth.

I told Sunset about you gives you a strong rollercoaster trip of emotions from happiness, friendship, love, desire, lust, despair, sadness, anger and probrably much more.

The director's meticulous style, shines through as there is little to ask for in matter of details and poetism.
From music, to angles, to scenery and location, not to mention acting details demanded by the actors.
To our utterly delight Billkin, Krit and Smile really delivers.

In my humble opinion, it is easy to portrait desire as such but actual youth lust (without it becoming pornographic) is really hard, which Billkin and Krit slayed. It sucked me in so deep I barely blinked.
I honestly felt traumatized even (ep3).

You cannot deny this being not just 2020 top, if not the best series, but I'd even go that far that say it was one of the best drama Ive watched past decade.


However, it does not recieve a 10/10 for 2 reasons:
1. The last 2 episodes felt rushed. I mean, I feel great respect (especially if you watch the documentary) how well they did producing the series, but it doesnt excuse poor execution. Acting was good all the way, but production relaxed abit in ep4 and in ep5 even more.
2. The last episode and the ending was frustrating.
Some may think it was a happy ending and all but, considering how real, honest, on point and even realistic up to ep3, ep5 just went..whaaat?
It the scenography wasnt so beautiful, if the acting wasnt so breathtaking, I believe a lot of people would not think highly of the series as must of us did.

So in short, the ending felt short in the scriptstory. From realistic to wimsy nonsense even.
The promise of a season 2 is joyous but I guess we will actually wait and see if they will succed to match season 1.


Lastly, an important not that also makes this a wonderful drama to watch: THEY DID NOT WRECKED the female character!!!! This alone almost deserves an Oscar!
They had a HEALTHY YOUNG WOMAN that wasnt a wacko, dramaqueen or evil bitch. She was just an awesome adolecent! Hooray!

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Raw food for the brain

This is no childrens story, its raw as it can be in Korean gay world, but anywhere else really.
Its a story that tells the darkside, the flipside of quick-fix-job, how it breaks people and souls.

For me this could have been a longer movie, yet they still managed to tell a lot in the short amount minutes.
Acting was quite good and the spice was delivered, well, naked.
Imo, Cheol Soo is the ultimate slut, in not a good sense. He totally fooled me with his 4seconds of innocense in the very begining but instatly transformed into this vulgar person.

It is worth watching as it is tad different from other LGBT/BL dramatisation out there but thats it.

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5seconds rule

Another series covering desired between parties and done right.
Episode 6 concluded it all.
Sure I didnt liked that half of that last episode was basically flashbacks but from a kiss-addicts point of view, both episode 5 and 6 had good kisses and follow ups to that.
It also shows how Ali King (Key) is a lill bit more experienced than Alec Kevin (Chen) but its all in the details nothing disturbing.

I warmly recommend this drama. Its cute, lill bit cliche but warm and cuddly.
For INTL fans I can happily also inform that the translation was quite good, so no much missing on stuff.

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You keep watching because its so hilarious bad

Right of the bat from first episode you know the voice over, the acting, the everything the drunk and high director did, is bad. Overall the story wasn't bad if you ignore all the red flags, the orange and purple flags :P
If you also ignore pretty much anything that makes sense.

But how do you finish it?
Well, the 10minutes per episode helps a lot.
You dont watch it because it is good, you watch it because you can bingo your way through it, ticking off the entire list of cliche-stuff but also all the fatal errors of how-not-to-make-a-drama.


Tbh, despite his characters..behaviors' in the start of the drama, I liked Wang Hao Xuan as the bad guy.
It's something about him that he suits sooo much better as naughty and bad, than soft and "serious".

The only reason this drama even gets over 5 in rating is because it still somehow catches my attention to finish it.

Looking for something really comically bad to watch? Look no further :D

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Respectfully this is bad

It is with respect to the actors, to the makers of this series that I have to say, sorry, it is really bad.
Let's begin with the easy; music choice: it is cheesy and very wannabe Italian-mafia music?
Its common to have a themse-song but this one just made the whole series even worse.

Followed by audio which, oh heavens! Sure, there are plenty of worse cases out there, no doubt but this one surely was a miss. While are at the external parts of the story, lets talk about scenography and lightning.
They went amateur deluxe! I've seen Phillipine budget dramas with better and overall cinography than this.
From here it's downhill.
The choice of actors was bit..mismatch?
To be honest, the surrounding cast felt more interesting and the main actors. The main actors did a good job as per directed I imagine, but there was no good chemistry anywhere. The serious and hanky spanky scenes felt more like comedy than something sexy. They tried the bdsm-theme but it's so terrible in so many degrees that it hurt my artistic kinky soul to the core.

Lastly, we have the so called story, well, about that..
..it was forced from the get go. The ONLY believeble part in the entire drama was a certain shower scene ;) with the guards... :D :D : D
Everything else was just like a nightmare or bad joke. Oh and it's 100% Stockholm-syndrome romatizised that well..blergh. When they pretended to speak other languages or well, they did speak other languages and it's so terrible that I found myself cry-laughing then fast forwarding due to the agony.

Giving this even more than a 2 in rating is charity.

PS! Apart from the failures a bit everywhere, they didnt failed too much with they eyecandy, hence some bonus rating stars :P

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The unpopular opinion review

So, I rushed to watch this after savoring it for a while, just to be disappointed.
Don't get me wrong though, the actors were really good, they lifted the story quite a bit.
So did the music.
It ends there.

Story wise, not sure if its like that in the webseries, it is bit lacking.
The censorship around their skinship and other intimate moments really ruined it all.
It was ok, to show assault, sexually and other types of asssaults but anything around love was cut out.
The whole romantizesing of forced behaviours upon others really gave some distaste.
The whole near rape and various lack of consent things going on, without proper follow up was disturbing.

To really really mess things up, the last 10 minutes of the end of the final episode felt really unfinnished.
It even pissed me off a bit.
But sure, the chemistry between the actors was top notch, but as I first mentioned, that and the music was what made the series watchable, not the story itself.

Worth a rewatch? No.
I dont get it why so many thinks so highly of this series.

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It could have been 4 hours and still not boring.

Lets begin with what I said on the headline.
Don't get me wrong, a 2hours movie of this kind is still quite long, but...
..considering how rushed the content was with a bit too much plotholes, it should have been longer or even divided in 2 movies. The holes were a bit too big to pass.

You dont need to go line by line from the original story but there are certain keynotes that by taking out, cuts the overall experience.
I think even if I were to watch this without have read the manga or watched the anime, Id still feel parts were missing.

It began well up to 30minutes in, then the rush began and it went downhill.

The story is still beautiful but I wished the actress played Myio even more humble and puny.
In the alternative media I kept the feeling MUST PROTECT HER BY ALL MEANS but in the movie I really didnt felt as moved. The maids had a quite impact in the story but the were cut off rather short because, again, there was no room for anything else.
This is what lowers the score.

Fx wise I was happy. It was flashy and yet not as much to ruin it. I find it was kinda subtle and fitting for film and the music felt just right.

All in all, it was an adaptation that went its own path. I missed a lot of things from the story.
I recommend watching the anime (on Netflix and has finished airing) or reading the manga (that is not finished).

I still recommend this but Id say, watch the movie first then the other media otherwise you might be as disappointed as I was.

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Lacking

Regardless how much I really love both Jeff and GamePlay, I feel storywise and as series, Ingredients felt lacking.
Perhaps because it was too long between the episodes where each episode itself wasnt impactful enough, perhaps it was production, in whatever the case is, the only somewhat memorable from the show was the food.
I wish I could say it was the music, because it was good, as singles and outside the show.
The last song was good and felt good in place, which I kept thinking to myself "why didn't they had such melody from the get go?"

It shows how the actors were growing during the production, which, again, should be a good thing but it made the show itself inchoherent in my opinion.

The script felt dull compared to the acting and the production was even more lacking.
It has many fluffly moments and the last episode is a sobfest without any particular closure or closing points.

Will it be a sexond season?
It gets a low grade because there were too many episodes and situation that leaves you hanging and gives you incomplete vibe, which is such a pity towards the actors.

The food is easy to feast on the eyes and invites you to cook it yourself, which is a huge bonus.
The songs are easy to listen to (tad mellow though).

I wish Id seen this in one go, but watching it as it was released, didnt do good..

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That reality check but totally feelgood drama you must watch

Lets just go through some basics and ratings:
Acting from ML. 10/10 FL 8/10(maybe 6/10 she wasn't consistent).
The rest of the crew were on point most of the time so Id give it 9/10.

Before the showering of compliments of the story, lets talk about the some things that made it not get a full score:
1. The BFF of the FL was really off the chart wtf? Most of the characters had some, even small, kind of background story connected well with the story, except the BFF which also had A LOT of screen time.
2. When in Rome... There are plenty of Korean-Chinese speaking actors, yet, they failed horribly with this. Nuff said.
3. Ep 27 was a really tough filler episode I wish I didn't even watched.
4. TBH, apart from the topic about female gamers (pro gamers even) the FL was really bland in general. Everyone else outshone her in both character and acting.
5. The overall pacing was decent but the last 8 or so episodes felt rushed and all over the place
6. Brand cars... I get it, it was to empathize the characters being rich and all, but cmon! Where is the common sense?
Or was it a product placement thing? Even if you are rich and all that, you would still NOT, especially under those situations drive an Aston Martin car.
7. Speaking of money; Unless you are Elon Musk, even in the esport industry, you cant just buy-out a team over a night.
I get it, fiction and all that but it was really out of place.


Now to all the goodies:

It was a lovely lovestory; it had sugar, it had sweet n sour, it had salty and to my surprise, the spice was chef's kiss.
Most of the things within the topic of the drama was realistic; the issues (money, family, the tourments, the fan-issues, the papparazzis, housing, even the injuries, sponsors etc), the pace, the background and cultures and even the game is not a nonsense gimmick but actually a real game. The same with most of the teams, they are irl teams, so I was really stoked about it (sure, the on screen team players were actors but not all).

I loved the parents here, all of them; from the good and the bad ones.

I loved the directors and everyone on the crew paid such attention to the even tiniest details; the commitment was amazing.

The flirting was solid. Im weak for such type of stories but even weaker for good acting on top of that.
Xu Kai aint ugly, but among many other Chinese actors, he aint the prettiest and most handsome; what he however lacks in looks (as per hunk-standards) he makes up with everything else. I kept telling myself how I was practically falling in love with him as the episodes went on. It was a slowburn til I couldnt even get enough and wanted more.
Then the intimate scenes came and it even made my **cough** maiden heart flutter and my face to blush.
I even felt some jealousy towards the FL, that bad.

But it wasn't just ML and FL's hot scenes that was aced, the second couple, to my surprise was as spicy and juicy.

In the end, what I loved most with the drama was that it was mature.
Young adults but not the kind of gullible nonsense post-teen newly popped from Uni kinda inmature grown-ups often seen in Asian dramas and movies, no, it was like..real?
The friendship and their teasing of each other, contract talking and a lot of things just felt adulty and relatable even for a non-gamer.

I think the story was good enough that it could perhaps even have a sequel and if done the same way, it would still be as good.
This is also one of the few dramas I even recommend for a re-watch.
It has enough elements that it doesnt make it naggy or too tiresome.

If not for the few aspects I mentioned first, Id give this a hard rock10.

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Iconic

As headline says, its iconic.
Is it good? Yes, if you like Z-tales.
Predictable and I wish the jerks had worse endings.
I personally aint very fond of Z content but I endured this one, mainly because the acting was that good.
It was the perfect Z-popcorn excitement cine you watch with friends.

I wish the ending was a little bit better but all in all, it was quite good, again, its the acting that raises the rating, script wise, not as much .

Perhaps contradictive but it has 99% good re-watch rate as the Fx and all the small details you might miss the first round.
Another small interesting part is that the movie is 2hours long, which makes the story almost in real time (as a regular Soul-Busan journey takes ~2.5hours with the speed train), for that alone, it makes this worth watching.

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When raw hits you like a truck and you were wearing pink-glasses

***SPOILER ALERT***
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First of all, if you are a virgin, a vanilla person, someone that never suffered from mental health issues, this will be a very uncomfortable movie to watch. Even if you a kinkster, you may have questions.
However, I personally found this movie beautiful, although with doubtful morals.
I love how they approached the mental health issues, bdsm, care and aftercare.

How they punched you with the face about alternative "treatment" for suicidal patients. Belive it or not, some of the stuff done (not the sex part), the psychological part of it, is actually practiced in real life, all around the world.

I remember due to a trauma I had, I unwillingly tried to kill myself and the doctor helped me by telling me all the ways of how I could die..and all the ways and likahood of failure each method had, with what consequences it had for myself and people around me. They showed varies pictures and let me visit post-suicide, survival patients.
How bad it gets now, one thing is for sure, THAT treatment set a bar very high for me ever to cross that ever again.

And that is kinda like what happened here. Two very broken people, escaping crap by doing crap.
How fucked up and imoral methods used, the message came through.

But sure, if you just look at the bits here and there, its well, shit.

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