I've always had kind of a love hate relationship with Chinese historical BLs. Some are genuinely excellent, but then there are others that cram in so much plot that keeping track of all the layers of betrayal and scheming gets exhausting, and I end up checking out mentally. Part of the issue is also just how much content is out there in this space, so something really has to stand out to keep me hooked. In this case, the production value is genuinely impressive, top tier stuff, but story wise, I just couldn't bring myself to actually care about these characters. There's a ton of political scheming and backstage manipulation running throughout. Somewhere in the middle of all that chaos, a hostage ends up falling for his own Prince Charming. The show runs eight episodes, each around 50 to 60 minutes long. After spending three years guarding the border, Fifth Prince Yin Qi gets called back to the capital because of a secret letter, only to end up walking straight into a deadly...
This film is from way back 1997 and I will not be surprised if this is the first and probably the only few gay themed films I know of from Western African continent. The film is very much out there. It does seem low on production values and slightly amateurish, but maybe that's just how things were. There in the country back then. So I watched this film with a very open mind. Manga and Sory are two young men studying in school and very much in love with each other. Manga tells his widowed mother of the relationship, and Sory tells his father. Both parents forbid their sons to see each other again. Surprisingly their classmates are very supportive of the relationship. Manga's mother turns to witchcraft to cure her son, and he unsuccessfully undergoes a lengthy form of aversion therapy over multiple years. We don't see much of Sory during this time, although we do know that he is not interested in running his father's business but wants to do farming in a village. Manga m...