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Chained To My Bully Stepbrother (AI Vertical BL Drama)

By Golu
This is the second vertical AI BL drama I've sat through, and honestly I went in knowing better. I had it on while I was doing cardio at the gym, and what struck me was just how much the plot echoed the last one I watched. Same step brother romance angle, same mystery girlfriend showing up near the end, same extra guy pining after one of the leads. Genuinely the only thing going for it was the runtime, the whole thing wrapped up in forty five minutes flat.  The setup kicks off with Finn moving schools because his mom just married into money. He finds out his new step brother Aiden goes to the same place, and he's warned to keep his distance from him. Their first run in at school is rocky, just like you'd expect, but there's this odd pull between them neither can shake off. Finn keeps telling himself not to read into it because Aiden's straight and openly homophobic. Things shift when some kids start bullying Finn and the student council president, Ryan, steps in to ...
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Stage Of Love (Vietnamese) (Web Series)

By Golu
There was so many parallel stories crammed up into this series, that you dont really get time to connect with the characters. I mean, as it is the series is struggling with acting and direction, had they focused on just on the boys love, things would have been much better.  Everything else around distracts you from the main story.

Nguyen is a college senior, who left theatre club because of an accident, even though theatre is his passion. `enter Bao, a fun and active freshman who just joined theatre club alongwith his best friend. Bao gets to play the role of Romeo in the popular play. The theatre club president Khanh reaches out to Nguyen to share and mentor the new actors. Khanh is dating his best friend. After a few days of rehearsal, Nguyen and Bao have started to find a common ground. And even more, the chemistry between the two have gone past the stage of just pure friendship. Nguyen even tells Bao that he likes him but Bao stays quite. He is in fact shocked. But this info gets leaked and Bao is bullied, although Nguyen is always there to protect him. The play eventually happens and is a success. The secret behind how the stage accident with Nguyen happened also comes to light in the meantime. Eventually in a sudden twist of events, Bao's best friend proclaims his love for Bao to Nguyen who then realizes that Bao can never be his love. Bao finally takes the courage to accept that he also loves Nguyen and they both end up kissing.

Although above I have highlighted only the main focus of the story, which is a gay love story, almost half of the other time, there is focus on a lot of other characters. We have the girl playing Juliet, who is obsessed with handsome boys and sometimes write BL fiction. Her older brother is Nguyen's best friend and a lot of time is focussed on his relationship with Khanh. There is another guy in the club who is also obsessed with Khanh and is the actual perpetrator behind getting Nguyen out of theatre. Its just all too convoluted and contrived and after a point I really couldn't care less. Also the acting and the direction is sub par. The characters talk as if they have memorized their lines and just talking it out. There is absolutely no feeling, no connection, no empathy. There is not much of a back story as to why Bao lives alone. Or why does Bao suddenly have feelings for Nguyen at the end. It is all too random. The direction could have been lot more crispier. The only good thing about the show is how cute Bao is. All the girls are shown to be super annoying.

Having seen some good Asian BL stories of late, my expectations from the genre are a bit high. So when I see such a shoddy job, I am disappointed. It may be a big deal to have a gay series for the country as a starting point but as a seasoned viewer, I did not like the series at all. (3/10)
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