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Soul Mate (Japanese Series)

By Golu
Is this technically a gay show? Even after getting through the whole thing, that's still kind of tricky to answer. There's never any physical intimacy shown between the two leads, not even a single kiss. What it gives you instead is something that goes way deeper than that. It traces an emotional bond that spans a full decade between two guys who are both dealing with their own baggage, and what they share basically amounts to being soulmates. The story moves across Japan, South Korea, and Berlin. Honestly, whether people want to call what they have a romantic relationship or not doesn't really matter to me. A relationship doesn't need a label like boyfriends attached to it to actually mean something. And closeness doesn't need to be physical to feel genuine. What this show captures is something quieter but way more powerful, a bond rooted in understanding, respect, and just showing up for each other. Across eight episodes, each running 35 to 45 minutes, this is one...
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My Lascivious Boss (Vietnamese Series)

By Golu
One of the many problems with this series is that attires to do too many things in little time. It wants to ta all BL tropes and add them all to this series. There is no real character development, shallow characters and motives, total lack of depth and many such. I think had I seen this 4 years ago when it came out, I might have thought of it a little better, but watching it today when there is so much evolution in asian BL, this just comes off as laughable. 

A cafe owner has just been dumped by his girlfriend. He passes out but he bumps into this ‘girl’ who helps him get home and they end up having sex. He somehow cannot get her out of his head. The reality is that girl is actually a boy who occasionally dresses as girl to make online content o make extra cash. Incidentally, through his 2 other gay couple friends, he ends up getting a job as a waiter at the same cafe owned by the boss. We discover that this cafe owner is quite ‘lascivious’ and really treats females merely as sexual objects to play with. He feels that this boy is related to the girl he met because of the body smell and meets her again and starts to fall for her. Eventually the truth comes out and the boss realizes that he fell for the person instead of gender. In between all this we get to know. Bit more about our boy who was abused by his family for being gay and his ex-boyfriend also told advantage of him. We have the necessary evil girlfriend for the boss who will do everything to keep the man close to her.  

If this sounds a bit convoluted, it perhaps is but it is a story of great deception and manipulation and does show the vulnerable side of what it is like to be gay and how easy to is to be manipulated by supposedly boyfriends and friends. It also shows how difficult it really is to break that cycle and not be manipulated into the same familiar pattern of behavior. But the problem is that the execution of this whole thing is extremely poor. The editing is bad, acting is below average, the screenplay is poor and things are little too convenient whether it is for good or bad. The lead actor is kinda cute and you could fast forward to watch the show just to see him. The boss was alright, although his actions were questionable most times. This could have been a way better series if some serious thought was given to actually developing the characters instead of making it so episodic so that a story could be told. This was likely good when the country had started its journey few years back but it definitely has not aged well. (3/10)
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