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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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Mr. Sahara & Toki-kun (Japanese Series)

By Golu
So there is a huge red flag in the series: A love story between a teacher and a high school student. The series completely ignores this aspect and treats it as just another BL story. So as much as I have BIG problems with this kind of relationship and unacceptable in my books, I am still going to try and write my review from a BL perspective, ignoring, for now, this aspect (which really, as much as you try, is hard to ignore). Like most Japanese BL's this show is 8 episodes each of about 24 minutes.

Toki is a school student who is infamous for always getting intro trouble and picking up fights. Everyone pretty much ignores him because he just has a bad reputation, but things change when a new teacher arrives in school. A young looking guy, Mr. Sahara instantly becomes popular with the girls. While other teachers in school are always shouting at Toki, Sahara shows genuine concern towards him and he motivates Toki and encourages him to take his studies seriously. Toki gets inspired, attends the class and makes a real nice friend in class. But Toki is at risk of failing exams, so Sahara connects him with a senior student Todo, who is also a popular basketball player. Toki is slightly disappointed because he was hoping that Sahara will give private lessons. Anyway, the teacher student relationship begins to develop with a genuine concern and care for one another, while Toki starts to develop a big time crush on Sahara. In between we see a love story between Todo and another shy geeky photographer guy and who Toki helps them come together. Toki and Sahara share each other's back stories in which we find that while in school Sahara used to like someone in his swimming class but the guy rejected him. To everyone's surprise, this new guy also joins the school as a teacher and explains to Sahara why he rejected him and asks him to give him one more chance. But by now, both Sahara and Toki have strong feelings for one another and they both confess. They decide that Toki need to focus on studies and get into a nice college, while they continue to work on their love.

One thing I enjoy in a few Japanese shows are those over the top comical reaction to awkward situations. And this did not disappoint me. Toki had perfect reactions and I Somehow always enjoyed those. Yes, we have the whole teacher student angle here, which despite even with the less age gap between them is still questionable just because of the whole legal issue. I am not sure if this is a cultural thing, because I feel like I have seen this in at least 2 other shows where a high school student relentlessly pursues an older guy. A crush is different , but the olde guy giving in is something else. Anyway!! I enjoyed both Toki's and Sahara's characters. Toki is both vulnerable and strong, affecting and really funny. I loved all scenes where he crushes hard on the man and sometimes his friends tease him. Sahara, initially comes off just a vanilla but handsome guy, but once you get to know his backstory, you start to relate to his complexities. The guy playing Sahara is extremely gorgeous with a dashing smile. The love triangle of sorts that was brought in the last 3 episodes added an interesting mix. In fact, I started wondering, if, for a change, the show makers will make the old lovers ship together, but wasn't meant to be. I mean, the title of the series is a direct giveaway. Back to the leads, it felt like both Toki and Sahara helped each other rediscovering themselves for the pain that they were individually going through. The other love story of cool basketball player and his half-brother was just alright. Ike most BL's parallel stories are added just to stretch the series and this one did exactly that and nothing more. Overall, the series in no great shakes but wasn't bad either. At no pint I was rolling my eyes, which, in my world does not happen very often. It's a decent overall watch. (5.5/10)
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