Welcome to my weekly blog post where I give thoughts on dramas I’m watching but not recapping.

This week I posted my final thoughts on On A Starry Night/Hoshi Furu Yoru ni, which I still highly recommend. I’m through episode 7 of the Thai slice-of-life BL Moonlight Chicken, so I’ll finish that up next week. I’m also starting to recap Old Fashioned Cupcake next week. 

This week I have an initial review of:

Naked Dining – 全ラ飯 – 2023 (Pictured)

A currently airing Japanese food BL, I’m at 3 out of 12 episodes.

A man who de-stresses by eating naked is caught in the act by an attractive young man who knew his grandmother.

That’s a very jdrama premise. The first two episodes were cute, setting up our nudist eater and the young man who runs a vegetable stand that the nudist’s grandmother used to frequent. There were tropes but not so much that I wasn’t enjoying the show. 

The third episode they started to flesh the characters out more and my enjoyment deepened. There’s an adorable height difference between our two leads, and our shorter, baby-faced lead is proving to be happy and confident, and tough. Meanwhile, our tall salaryman is great at his job but giving it too much of his life. I like the dynamics and they aren’t rushing too hard into the romance, which considering the episode count, seems like a good sign.

Episode 3 also made me immediately go out and get fish tacos for lunch.

This makes two lightly-culinary Japanese BLs that I’m enjoying.

This week I finished:

The Starry Love – 星落凝成糖 – 2023

A recently aired Chinese Xianxia of 40 episodes.

Twin sisters of the human realm are destined to marry into the evil Void kingdom and the good Heavenly kingdom. Things get a little confused on the important day and each sister ends up going to the wrong kingdom.

My second favorite Xianxia I’ve ever watched and a very good show, but it may not be a rewatch for me.

I’ll start with my main complaints. First, it was at its best when it was poking fun at the Xianxia genre. But it still hit some trope-y Xianxia angst of plot and characters, and those parts weren’t fun.

Second, the plot was pretty weak, existing mainly to lead our characters on comic adventures without much depth, so the problem compounded. I wouldn’t mind the loose nature of the plot if it had stuck to being entertaining, but once the crying and speeches started they just made the weaknesses more apparent.

The angst didn’t take up the majority of the show though, so most of the time I watched it felt like I was on a fun adventure with some friends. The characters stayed consistent and the acting was great. The romances were swoony and if I do rewatch, it’ll be to see them.

I think especially if you know you gravitate towards lighter stuff and comedy, it’s worth a watch.