Pudding loving yakuza idiot boss

Well, I never expected to finish this since I almost dropped it 10min into the first episode. But my laziness got the better of me and I forced myself to finish the first episode. Before I knew it I was at episode 5, enjoying the drama a lot. And then suddenly, I was bored and annoyed....

The plot is original: a 27yr old yakuza heir, more brawn than brains, is forced back to high school. He has to pretend to be 17 and he has to graduate. I liked this premise and once the school started, it was fun and interesting to watch. The events moved forward very quickly, a bit too quickly sometimes. I found the pacing off. So much so, I lost interest in the second half because of the repetitiveness and the overacting.

The best part of this drama is the cast of secondary, support characters: the gardening aficionado school principal, the embroidery aficionado yakuza, the mysterious nurse uttering the words of wisdom and, of course, a whole classroom full of different types of characters.

The worst part of this drama is the main lead. I don't know if he was written like this or if this was the interpretation by the director and actor but he was just awfully overacting. I have to give it to the actor, he has incredible facial muscles and his jaw moves in mysterious ways. The mafia voice, the grimacing and the jumping around is worth of the best manga adaptation. Apparently this is not one of those. Still, they used many of the manga tropes. The actor, when he stops making faces, is so handsome, to die for. But those goggly eyes, twisted mouth, protruding jaw were weird. What I find the most incomprehensible, is that nobody found his jumpy, grimacing behaviour strange and weird!
The burgeoning romance was cringy at best, completely lacking any chemistry but it helped to confirm the main character's lack of maturity: he is basically an unruly child in an adult's body. And even though he matures through learning, he reverts to his primal state every time he dons his yakuza attire.

The drama stresses the importance of education and how Makio, reluctant at the start, realizes the advantages good education can bring him as a yakuza boss but mostly as a person. The representation of yakuzas does not seem very credible. They mostly look like comedy relief characters in a comedy: ridiculous and, again, over the top with their special salutations and costumes (black suits gang vs. hawaiian shirts gang). The most ordinary looking were finally the kids bringign a sort of balance to the outrageous comedy. Which I did not find funny. At all!

I liked the pudding though I was shocked that a school would not order enough for all who wanted it or allow its pupils to fight over it. Once they dropped the pudding from the plot, the drama somehow lost its flavour.

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Matchmaker & Breakup Master

This short web series which came as a recommendation on a streaming site, turned out to be such a lovely surprise. I had not heard of it before and barely anyone has seen it here: such a waste! If you need something light and fun, not too long but cute and sweet, this is perfect.

Joyce is the owner of a small local café. She has a membership scheme where she matches random people when they come due to the small amount of tables. Her customers hit it off, so much so that she starts to be considered as a matchmaker which was never her intention. One of her customers is Marco who created a start up offering mediation for break ups and who works out of her café.

There are several love stories: a noona romance, a lgbt couple, a couple of unlikely pairings and of course Joyce and Marco. All these stories were sweet and cute with a load full of chemistry. Joyce is somewhat a busybody which was a bit cringy but the actress comes with a sunny smile so even those uncomfortable scenes become palatable. Her romance was the slowest one and therefore the most detailed. When Marco's ex who does not want to break up challenges Joyce, there is a hilarious baking contest.

The writing and acting were just right. The music added to the overall feel of wellbeing. Just one thing bothered me a bit: why is everywhere so empty especially around her café? It looks like an abandoned city....rather spooky or like COVID era!

The drama was sponsored by Singleton whisky so every episode ends with a recipe for a whisky based drink.

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Big Bunny, Teeny Tiger & oodles of cute and fluffy goodness....

This is how you make a perfect romcom! Respect your audience, make characters adults, behaving like reasonable adults and not losing every braincell when in love and try to turn some tropes upside down. Add some excellent acting and extraordinary chemistry, mix it all,and serve! If we do not expect anything else but a fairy tale, we are going to be over the moon!

The plot is fairly simple: a doctor and a boxer meet. They hit it off immediately but do not realize how much in love they really are as fast as they should!

What I liked:
- reverse romance: they start as FWB living together in domestic bliss, then start dating and then ask each other out! I liked the slow pace too: they both had issues to deal with and it was given the time necessary!
- chemistry is off the charts!
- acting is excellent
- second couple is cute
- consent etc. very consensual (wedding in the final episode!)
- Sarin's dimples (I want more of this actor: he is phenomenally talented!)
- skinship beautifully filmed
- costume designer: some disguise costumes were just perfect (like the clowns! Sooooo cute!)
- Grandma with a guitar, for a change, and not them!

What I disliked:
- title and poster: looks cheap and sounds incomprehensible
- bad doctor's speedy redemption (why does everyone need to be paired off at the end?)
- ending: they just got together but are already going their separate ways because of their careers? Long distance relationship for a few YEARS?!?!? I want to see how that works!
- cringy last episode: the award ceremony and the wedding....
- a gala reception and a conference held in, what looked like a closet with a matching attendance (maximum 10 people! very empty looking!)
- I know that choreographed dancing worked well in MSP, but do you need to put it now in every bl?
- costume designer: some wardrobe choices were simply bad: gala suits and Cher's wedding... shorts?!?! What is he? 12?

This bl was far from perfect but I loved how it entertained me, how it gave me butterflies and how it kept a silly smile on my face non stop while watching it. It is arguably one of the best bl out there, carried by the greenest flag kind of characters. A perfect summer watch! I want more!

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Gritty, twisted and unapologetic!

I needed a drama for my Back To The Past challenge, and this one seemed interesting with the added bonus of being short.
Well, this was something different, definitely not what I expected to watch though when I found the first episode on a porn site, I should have started wondering.....

Thank you, ParkMin for the title: I borrowed it from your short and to the point comment!

Temptation of Eve is an OCN anthology series of four feature length (90min) independent erotic thrillers featuring stories about the fascination women provoke in men and the lengths the men are willing to go for them.

The Good Wife - a wheelchair bound man asks a friend to follow his wife, suspecting her of cheating.
Kiss - a photographer is intrigued by the strange behaviour of the new neighbours, suspecting abuse.
Her Own Technique - a plastic surgeon, valuing beauty above all, is fascinated by a woman with a perfect body and a butterfly tattoo.
Angel - a policeman investigates the murder of a plastic surgeon's husband.

The stories are all twisty, twisted, and nothing is what it seems at first glance. Each ends with an unexpected twist. Though after the shocking ending of the first episode, I was just waiting to see how they were going to bring the twist around in others. And it was a surprise every time. So the writing of the thriller element was definitely top notch.

Now that I finished the four stories, I am trying to decide whether the writers of these are women haters or if they admire them. Because here, the women are perfect gray characters, they have the upper hand they hide perfectly well, letting the men think they are being macho helpful and protective. Men on the other hand are the primal selves, out there doing everything they can to protect the woman, who is apparently weak, innocent and abused. Nothing is further from the truth, though! The women here are presented as smart, beautiful, independent, wilful and intriguing, manipulating the men by pretending to be weak females. Here, the men are stupid, comforted in their position as a dominant gender of the species and never doubting the women.
So, I'd say that the writers are in awe and admiration of women but are also afraid of them! Their writing skilfully balances on the thin line between misogyny and misandry. And we are all left feeling uncomfortable. Because the main male characters in each story are not bad or evil people, just stupid, gullible and who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time!

Women in these stories use sex to dissipate men's suspicions so there is a lot of love making and nudity here, though no full-frontal! Everything is tastefully filmed and is necessary for the stories since it shows how the women get to control the men., who in their presence behave like brainless idiots.

I watched this in low quality on ok.ru so I cannot say much about the cinematography, though some camera angles and play with shadows were interesting. The costumes and make up looked outdated. It was weird seeing all those flip phones but I liked the retro feel of not relying on mobiles as much as we do today.

Temptation of Eve is not for the faint of heart, nor for today's young adults: I can see them screaming at how not PC it is. I liked it though, exactly because of that: it shows the human nature the way it is in all its greyness, and not the way these young utopians would like it to be. So I would say this is for the 40+ crowd: no one younger should watch this: because if I started listing trigger warnings for them, it would take me a couple of hours!

Hell hath no fury as the woman scorned!

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Solid time travel makjang

Well, this was great! Same concept as Marry My Husband but so much better written and acted: can you imagine an actress who can actually move her face? Sorry, but MMH was ruined by the lack of expression on Park Min Young's artificial face!

The story follows YiJoo as she comes to finally accept that her family never loved her. She gets into an accident and is offered a redo: she's sent one year back and as she struggles with the realization, she also decides not to be a doormat anymore and kicks the festering wasp nest that is her family, with all her might. Secrets and lies keep coming out as she shakes everyone up.

This was a solid little makjang, excellent writing without obvious plotholes. I liked the FL because she was strong and smart and never really wavered. Her husband was there to help her but she was leading the game. The evil characters were the usual makjang baddies: awful stepmother, greedy resentful brother....They keep trying to kill the FL but, of course, the more they try the more they fail and end up in prison. What else?!?

The FL is supposed to be an artist, a painter. But she apparently paints in two different styles: extremely ugly hyperrealism and the beautiful symbolism (I guess...).

The PPLs were in your face (made me think of The King:Eternal Monarch) and too many too cringy for anyone's liking!!! A bit of subtlety would have been nice!

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Excellent but too short!

And even though the beginning of the first episode can serve as the epilogue and a happy ending, we need another episode to make it evident. I really don't know why the producers dropped this drama: they ran out of money? Still they should have made it available to international audiences because the story is interesting, gripping and the series is too bloody short! And I want to know why they seem to want to forget about it! I just hope that it did not ruin the actors' careers.

Recently I read a book called If This Gets Out about a boy band members who fell in love and that's why I wanted to watch this. This drama can serve as a prequel telling the story of an idol gruelling training camp. The story follows a number of trainees and the way they deal with the pressure and ambition and how far they are willing to go in order to succeed. They are all shepherded by Serena who is on the surface cruel, strict and unforgiving but has a right moral core and knows what is actually needed to be an idol and survive in this cut-throat world! So over a year she train 20 young men. By the end only 10 remain.

I have no idea how this world works but I think they managed to explain it to me how hard it is to become an idol and what an extraordinary amount of work is needed in order to make it. But it is not only difficult for idols, the executives are also a bad lot and they may stab each other in the back like Serena's ex did to her.

Beside training and practising, there are a couple of love stories in the background and they were both sweet. One is Ken who spends a year pining after their singing coach, just making up reasons to talk to her. The other one is of course the bl one, we are all watching this for! Top and Juju are young men from different walks of life brought together by the same love of singing and dancing. Top is a bit older and is more mature and Juju grows in his presence. Their relationship is slow, sweet and normal. They clicked together from the first time they met and Top's cool head helped Juju calm down and see a bigger picture.

The drama takes place over a period of one year and therefore there have been some time jumps completely out of the blue. The first 5 episodes are during the first 3 months of training and then the final episode skips to the last week of it. Nevertheless they managed to say a lot in these six short episodes, there was never a dull moment, not a second was wasted.

The actors are all excellent and I hope to see them in other works. Soon please! I would like to single out the actor who played Juju: pretending not to know how to do something when you do, is extremely difficult! The rest of the cast deserve just as much praise but of course Zubom and Jaymin have stolen my heart!

The boys' final audition was amazing and made me think of Glee by the skilful way it was choreographed and presented (black & white costumes ...wink, wink!). The production was quite good: filming and acting top notch. So why did they have to go and have a screeching trans character (or are they really present all over thai entertainment industry?) and the pesky sound effects. What I liked on the other hand, were silly visual effects: elephants running over the screen and dashes encircling certain items on the screen.

I want more!

Finally, I would like to thank the fansubbers below for subbing this series in italian.
https://pinkmilkmonster.blogfree.net/?t=6440036

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Forgettable cutness and fluff

Well, this was ....watchable? A cute school romance, nothing more, nothing less. Unfortunately!

Maya is considered ugly in her school and when she confesses to her crush she is violently rejected. When the school heartthrob sees her unhappy, he offers to help her get over her crush by pretending to be in love with him. And it works better than they could have imagined!

First: Maya is not ugly. The actress is very pretty and I checked the manga as well, she is not ugly there either. So I guess my western eye cannot understand the japanese notions of beauty. Maya is rejected because she is considered ugly by a boy who is actually ugly: both inside and outside.
Second: it took me some time to understand the point of playing the unrequited love game with the school top popular boy. It was his a bit sneaky way to get her to know him better because he had already noticed her before and wanted to get closer to her. I found this very weird but then again teens are not known to have smart ideas when hormones are raging!
Third: it is a shame that japanese mangas do not do cross overs. Sometimes in the last third there was another possibility of romance was hinted but unfortunately it rested on the bromance level. That would have been a surprising twist giving this film an edge. But, well, maybe next time? In my dreams...

The film has no depth either of characters or the plot. As usual when based on a manga, these teens have no parents present. The school is not too harsh an environment and Maya seems to be coping well with repeated humiliations (as in she does not really care or she cares for about 5 seconds!). Some people complained about the lack of expressiveness in ML but I did not mind his unmoving, stony face: he was supposed to be high above others, a king on his throne, unreachable and difficult to get close to and understand.

This film is a cute and forgettable piece of fluff, a perfect Sunday watch!

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Cute ad....

Well this was cute but basically plotless! It is an add for some kind of refreshing herbal inhaler. It must be a thai thing since it is the first time I'm seeing this kind of usage (we are all familiar with Vick's inhalers for stuffy noses! This does not seem to have a similar purpose!).

The plot, if one can call it that, is about two best friends (on to becoming more one day soon maybe?) visiting main tourist attractions in Bangkok (as if Thailand needed more promotion with the current overpopulated tourist spots worldwide!) which are beautiful and full of history (and tourists!). Bom and Tar seem to be reprising their roles from I Will Knock You! Bom is cute and sweet and looks 15 (when he is actually 28!). Tar has grown taller since the drama and in spite of being only 19, he looks and acts more mature than Bom. They have great chemistry together and I would love to see them in something else, together: something in costume would be nice since they both looked hot in thai traditional clothes in ep 2 & 3. It is just that Tar needs to fix his awful haircut and they both need less lipstick.

The ads purpose has completely failed for me: I have no wish to buy one of those inhalers and especially not to give it to anyone as a birthday present. But I liked seeing the sights of Bangkok where I will never have the chance (money!) of going....

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Him & Her & Him....teens going overboard!

Unexpectedly good! I kept reading how the series is bad, limit child abuse so I never watched it but this film came highly recommended.

And they were right! It is a fluffy little school romcom where the plot thrives on misunderstandings and the qui-pro-quo's! Basically it is a love triangle: Boy 1 likes a Girl but he thinks she likes Boy 2 who thinks Boy 1 likes him because he spends a lot of time trying to get to know him. In the process Boy 1 really falls for Boy 2 in a surprising ending!

The actors are so cute and considering their young age, they act rather well, with an excelling comic timing solid chemistry. Which is, of course accompanied by usual, annoying sound effects and a cliché screeching trans teacher. When are they going to portray trans characters as ordinary people and not as drama queens in these series?

There are many hilarious scenes (going to emergency room after swallowing a piece of paper) but the best is the Boy 2's mother who speaks and moves slowly as if she had just smokes some illicit stuff and therefore has a very fertile imagination!

The drama seems to be a rip-off of Kieta Hatsukoi (which I never really liked!) rife with similar kid of misunderstandings and a drama club antics which are funny but surprisingly not over the top like in the japanese drama!

If you a looking for a light and fluffy short BL that is easy on the brain and very easy on eyes, this is a nice choice! It is well produced and filmed, the narration is quirky and it puts the watchers in the right mood!

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Curly hair mystery

As much as I was glad to watch Totono again, this film is a slight disappointment since it is missing everything that made the drama such an unmissable watch: Goro, curry and police! Well Goro does show up for 30sec at the beginning and the police are the extras in the last scene.... Still, definitely not enough! And the film is worse for it!

Totono is in Hiroshima (there is history there but we are not let on it! Yet!) and is dragged into a family inheritance mystery. Well, the mystery is unfortunately very predictable and the culprit is obvious the moment he shows up. Totono does his Sherlock Holmes thingy and the culprit is caught red handed and turned over to justice. THE END

The story behind the mystery involving "demons" and curly hair was quite interesting: showing the lengths the people are willing to go in order to gain and to keep the wealth over generations. There is another issue connected to the previous one and it concerns how the adults treat children who are, according to Totono like "wet cement": getting information from kids is like writing on wet cement, once it is dry, the marks remain and the kids are scarred for life! The young girl, who pulls Totono into this mess is an example of such damage having been done to.

Totono actually made this worth watching: with his quirks, his scarf and his dead pan revelations deliveries! I was also happy to see Machida Keita (Cherry Moon) being his understated extremely charming self and Higawara Riku (Utsukushii Kare) being a weirdly explosive self.

As usual I find the background music (classical) out of place in this film, just as much as I disliked it in the drama. The songs are nice but why do japanese like using western classical music so much?

Overall, it is a watchable film, well produced and acted but poorly constructed plot of the mystery. I'd recommend it only for th e die hard fans of Totono.

And finally, I would like to thank the Machida Keita fan who brough this to us with some amazing subs! Thank you so much!

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Extreme love

Wikipedia says: "Limerence is a state of mind which results from romantic feelings for another person, and typically includes intrusive, melancholic thoughts, or tragic concerns for the object of one's affection as well as a desire to form or maintain a relationship with the object of love and to have one's feelings reciprocated."

Tawan and Tunn are a couple of students, dating. But increasingly, Tunn does not want Tawan to interact with anyone else but him. Until one day he chains him up in his bed, the reason being the word is a bad place and Tawan needs to be protected and taken care off.

This is definitely NOT a nice and fluffy BL but a serious drama about mental health where the main characters happen to be gay. The story is scary, difficult and tragic: Tunn has been so traumatized in his childhood, abandoned by people he loved that he does not want to take any chances of that happening withTawan therefore confining him, without realizing that he has gone completely bonkers and overboard.

The actors are surprisingly good for a school project: the one playing Tunn really gave me the creeps, so much so I FFW a lot for the first time ever. They are very much at ease with each other and the skinship scenes were rather smooth. The direction and the filming was rather correct and though it is obviously a low budget film, they tried hard. The sound recording is bad and the subs are awful!

I liked the twist in the end: the whole story was just a school project so we have the final clap and the discussion between the actors, now being themselves and the director about the mental health issues. I personally found those a bit unclear and strange. There is also a final unexpected twist in the last minutes which actually gave me a fright!

The film is a bit too long, it should have been shorter for my taste. But that is just me!

One final question: are there really groups of girls at universities in Thailand, screaming at men they ship together ? Maximum cringe!

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Water, water everywhere....

I decided to be generous and reward this short film with a correct rating. It was Ok and somehow it wasn't. I liked the quirkiness of the beginning but they just had to go and ruin a cute story with stalking. When kids stalk each other it is often cute, here we are talking about adults so even though her stalking is not threatening it is definitely creepy and immature and not romantic. Still, they gloss it over completely...

The story is simple: a young woman who cannot help but hear the pattern (BPM beats per minute) in every sound, longs for the underwater silence and has only one friends, falls for her friend's boyfriend's friend Mizu and starts stalking him trying to figure out why her own heartbeat accelerates when she's near him. She records everything in a notebook titles Beats for Mizu.

The acting is excellent, the cinematography pretty, watery, subtle and light. There is a lot of water in this film starting with the story of little mermaid up to the ML's name. The music is excellent and it delivers emotions when the main characters cannot. The friendship between two young women is precious. I almost wanted this to go the GL route! The first boufriend/kis scene was hilarious: the awkward youth!

Nice short watch!

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Magical cocktail therapy...

Taste of Cat has a great concept, incredible cats and my favourite genre: fantasy. So why only four short episodes?

The cats take over their owner's bar late at night and help out strangers who stumble upon it. The drama covers two cases: a girl who finds out her ex is badmouthing her and a man who bumps unexpectedly on his ex and is ridden with regrets. The cats through drinks and more (fantasy element: body swap and time travel!) help them see more clear and sort it out!

Does anyone know what happened to these three actors? They are by far the most convincing. (and the cutest) cats I have ever seen! I could watch them play with a ball of yarn and throwing steamy glances to each other for hours: plot is not needed! So why did they sink into oblivion, doing bit parts, if any? What a waste! I looked them up while watching this short drama and the fact that their careers never took off as they rightfully deserved, made me incredibly sad .

The production is the usual for a korean web drama: some bad acting, some empty sets, some bad cinematography, though not all (the date was filmed soft like a dream...), I loved the original idea of the plot: the bartender listens to the customer's story in exchange for a shiny toy (bracelet, tie) and offers a corresponding magical cocktail!

Cute but too short! I know there is a sequel....still this concept deserves a better production and a longer drama!

review 100

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Peer pressure

Thank God for small mercies: halfway through this film I was certain that one character was going to off himself, everything was pointing in that direction. Korean shorts usually have a tragic ending. Well, this one was not tragic just unhappy. And very much expected considering the topic: high school boys and the power of appearances.

Two boys are friends and more (couple of chaste kisses prove that!) but a third boy is jealous, bigot, suspicious, discriminating and he manages to influence one of the boys to stop seeing his friend/boyfriend. That boy is very susceptible to other people's opinions and caves in easily in spite of having deep feelings for the other boy, who is used to be talked about in derogatory terms.

The film manages to say a lot in the space of 20min. The usual topics arise: high school, coming out, discovering one's sexuality, experimenting, peer pressure, gossip, self-confidence and the lack thereof. The cinematography is cold and dark and the direction rather straightforward.

Nice short film probably describing first experiences of many young men: it feels very raw and real.

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Pinky promises

I remember watching this as a drama a couple of years ago and not liking it very much: I found it messy, lacking chemistry and with low production value. Ever since then, I keep stumbling on occasional review and feeds post and they are all praising it highly. So I decided to rewatch it as a movie and to see if my original appreciation still holds!

Unfortunately it does! Even though I like this concept of red string of fate, it was nevertheless underwhelming. The motif of the red string is repeatedly used in different ways throughout the film which I found rather original: scarf, rope, pinky promise.... The characters are complete opposites: a cold debt collector and his fiery dancer debtor. Their relationship and bickering was nice, the actors were very much at ease with each other and yet still something was missing. They looked like they were not in synch while filming. The rest of the characters are just caricatures, barely sketched clichés: the cruel lady boss, the idiotic flamboyant sidekick, the mean rival (actually we never find out what happened to him after they spent so much time on him and when he left their last showdown with a cocky smirk!). And the sets? Pretty winter scenery but no heating inside: it was very cold on sets - that is very obvious!

Again, we have a korean mother who abandons her child after getting him in debt and cutting all means of communication with him. Are korean parents really this cruel? This is something that keeps repeating in k dramas so there must be a sliver of truth there. And that truth is ugly and it paints korean parents in a very bad light!

But everything considered, it is an OK single watch!

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