Welcome to my Saturday blog post, where I give thoughts on dramas I’m watching, whether at the beginning, middle, or end. Whatever I want, because I’m petty that way.
This week, I recapped episodes 5-6 of The Prisoner of Beauty. If you need a good ML-picks-the-FL-up, these are the episodes for you!
I also recapped episodes 3-4 of Khemjira. We get more flashbacks and some pinky touching, so things are really heating up.
And, I started a Patreon! If you want to support my blog and get access to my notes and rough drafts before posts are published, this is your chance!
What did I watch this week? There was some unexpected multi-country vengeance. Let’s start in Japan:
The Proper Way to Write Love – 恋愛ルビの正しいふりかた – 2025
Recently aired Japanese not-really-revenged love BL with 8 episodes.
After high school, a young man dedicates himself to becoming hot and cool, then gets a chance for revenge on a former bully.
Here’s a link to the trailer (I could only find one in Japanese.)
I meant to watch this show slowly over the course of a week, but I ended up bingeing it over two days. I really, really liked it.
Unfortunately, it’s part of the cruel nature of the universe that it’s harder to write about stuff I really liked than stuff I didn’t, but I’ll do my best.
I like that the show understood that high school sucked
There’s no misty-eyed nostalgia here. Our lead, Hiro, hated High School. All he wanted to do was plant flowers and get good grades, but he had to put up with being bullied and mistreated. One bully, Natsuo, who harassed him endlessly about the names of flowers, is our other lead.
Some number of years out of high school, Hiro is a hot and popular hairstylist. He’s won at life. But by chance, Natsuo shows up and gets a haircut. In a plot twist, he doesn’t recognize Hiro and asks him out.
Hiro sees his chance for revenge. He’ll date Natsuo, make him fall for him, and then cruelly dump him in a month. What could go wrong?
It’s a show of interesting contrasts and trope subversions
Natsuo isn’t much of a bully. Instead, he’s annoying, childish, clingy, and painfully open about his feelings. He’s always happy.
Hiro isn’t much of a victim. He’s angry, sharp-edged, smart, and guarded. He’s always unhappy.
So who has the advantage? Who is the tough one? Who is the more vulnerable one? Who is the top? It’s a lot more complicated than it looks at first.
This being a Japanese BL, we have to establish early on who is going to make sure the couple doesn’t go hungry, and it’s Natsuo. He shows up at Hiro’s place and cooks, but instead of delicious masterpieces, he makes strange concoctions of fish and rice.
In the end, Hiro doesn’t spend much time on revenge, but more time being cared for and caring for Natsuo. Flashbacks to high school show us that how Hiro remembers things may not reflect the full reality of the situation.
Like the characters, the production is a bit offbeat
We’ve got two over-the-top characters, but the tone and visuals are very mellow, warm-toned, and slice-of-life. The “revenge plot” is more just our characters going about their lives together, growing closer, keeping secrets, and complicating things that could be simple.
And if the lackluster depiction of intimacy that we’ve been seeing in some otherwise enjoyable Japanese BL is bothering you, you don’t need to worry about that here. It’s not My Stubborn, but the intimacy is intimacying.
Also, what is it with Japan and plants? In Love Is A Poison, we got squealing succulants. Here we get Plant POV shots. I’m not sure why, but it’s different.
I hate that poster, though.
I know this won’t be for everyone, but I loved it
For some people, the characters will be too annoying, the plot a little too lacking, the whole thing too quirky, a little too offbeat, and the Plant POV will be the final straw. Also, if you’re watching to see Dai from The Boyfriend, he is here, and he gets a few lines, but it’s nothing big.
I recommend this to anyone looking for something with unique characters who somehow come together to be each other’s missing pieces.
But if you really want scheming and revenge, I’m going to recommend a different show:
Revenged Love – 逆爱 – 2025
Recently aired Chinese kinda-revenged love BL with 8 episodes.
A young man, dumped by his long-term girlfriend, vows to get revenge by stealing her new boyfriend. Even though he’s not gay.
China is (kinda) getting into the BL world, and all the internet is talking about this show. Here I am to add my crucial opinion to all the intellectual discourse.
I really enjoyed it!
The production is terrible, with bad dubbing and visuals that feel shot with saving time and money in mind. The plot is over-the-top nonsense, and the first half-dozen episodes feel like a fever dream of characters making bad choices and acting without thinking.
One of the leads is a violent, spoiled rich kid who doesn’t care about other people. The other doesn’t know how to do anything but scheme and penny pinch to get what he wants.
The music is this indie-folk sounding stuff, melancholy and moody, that clashes with the melodramatic-but-silly tone of the show.
There are a lot of snakes. Everything that happens with them is so convoluted it needs a flow chart to track. Also, none of it matters.
And if you can get past all that, it’s a really charming show with ridiculous characters who become besotted with one another. There’s a lot of kissing, considering the country of origin, and a lot of fun, fluffy character moments. There are also moments of surprising depth and genuine feeling. There’s kinda everything.
The set-up reminds me of Love In The Air
Another ridiculous show that is somehow more the sum of its parts.
Like Love in the Air, we have two couples. The first couple is a guy scheming against another, and the one being schemed against is aware that something is up and enjoying it. This pair is drama and chaos and silliness.
The second pair involves a Playboy and a shy doctor who wants nothing to do with him. This pair is a sweet, slow burn that provides the calm needed to get through the storm that is the other couple.
But it’s not just about the couples either. Our schemer and the doctor are such good friends, the doctor lets the schemer live at his clinic, next to boxes of medications. They have a mutual love of scheming and never want to face a problem head-on. We never see it, but I can only imagine that trips to the grocery store involve 10 minutes of scheming ahead of time.
They even scheme against each other in terrible ways, but never hold a grudge for long.
The biggest pleasure of this show is watching extreme characters fall hard
If you need your characters to be likable, this may not be the show for you. To make the biggest, dramatic change brought about by the power of love, these guys have to start terrible. So our rich, snake-obsessed lead is objectively a bad person.
Our other guy is straight. For a BL, that’s its own extreme.
Then they will chill out, creating some of my favorite quiet moments. Like when our rich-snake lover is enraptured by the schemer, falling for the absurd other man who thinks his acting is convincing. Or when our schemer realizes the rich-snake-guy treats him better than his long-term girlfriend did.
And with twenty-four episodes, this show has time to on a dramatic journey that changes our characters for the better. They don’t just prove their love for each other once, they do it again and again. It also gives them a chance to show that they are more than what they appear at first, and are complicated, three-dimensional characters.
And I love the music.
If you’re looking for something like Let Free the Curse of Taekwondo or If It’s With You, I advise you to run and don’t look back. Maybe try the show I reviewed above.
If you like dramatics and crazy characters, stuff like Pit Babe or Love in the Air, give this a try. I think this is my favorite of those three.
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