I have fallen woefully behind on my fujoshiing these past two weeks, partially because of scheduling but also because I’ve been busy watching Leverage: Redemption. It’s interesting watching an American show, especially one as episodic as Leverage, because as I’ve mentioned before, a lot of Asian dramas in general really aren’t that, largely because they’re adaptations. (I had this discussion recently with a friend of mine who is a writer of episodic fiction about how Chinese shows in particular do not seem to take episode breaks into account when pacing out their shows, or at least do not take them into account the same way we would.)
I’ve also seen several takes the past couple of weeks about what each country does well, and everyone seems to think that Thailand is the worst at writing and directing and Japan is the best, which I have to say I don’t really agree with, though it does also depend on what you consider good. My real take on what each country does well and not well is something like this:
Thailand: It’s undeniable that they often have very rough production, which is in part due to how fast they (especially GMMTV) turns out their projects, but it is also just because the film/tv industry isn’t as developed, infrastructurally. I don’t know the ins and outs of funding or anything, but even just looking at the production quality over the last 10-20 years makes it very apparent that the Thai industry has been growing exponentially to catch up to the rest of Asia.
I was looking up a show from the early/mid 2000s recently for research reasons and when I dug up a clip on YouTube, it really looked like something from the 80s in America, both stylistically and in quality. Even comparing, say, School 2013 from Korea and LoveSick, which came out within a year of each other, there’s a noticeable difference in deliberate style to School 2013 even though it is very obviously dated.
These industry growing pains in conjunction with the rapid expansion of BL have led to what we have now, which is a huge number of shows being produced, but production that is still growing and learning to find its artistic style. Some production houses and directors are farther along—BoC, for all my complaints about them, do have good production, and the Parbdee shows from GMMTV are always at least well-produced. Since starting watching Thai BLs in earnest in 2020, I’ve seen a huge shift in quality as more money has been invested (Director New has talked before about how directors often would have to self-fund!) and I’m curious to see where that will take them.
As for the writing, Thai shows do rely very heavily on web novels specifically, many of which are self-published and therefore not as edited as even a lot of Webtoons, and the fast turnarounds also leave less time to adapt and finesse. In general, I’ve noticed that a lot of shows start to struggle in the last third, which to be fair is not a problem unique to Thai BLs—kdramas are also somewhat notorious for this—but that, too, has been improving overall.
Also, when people complain about writing, I can never tell what exactly they mean—is it the pacing? The dialogue? The translation of that dialogue? The love of tropes? I’ve said before that I personally don’t find the use of tropes or predictability in fiction to be an inherent negative—it’s all about execution—but I know a lot of people find that irritating. (That being said, I would say like 50-60% of the Japanese shows I’ve seen follow a very similar structure and set of tropes.)
People also complain about Thai acting, and that is sometimes fair, but there are also so many actors and shows. And it depends on what you’re asking for in an actor. Sometimes chemistry and the ability to be charismatic in front of a camera is enough. (Sometimes it isn’t! And sometimes you don’t have any of those things, Yoon.)
The biggest strength Thailand has at present is diversity of stories being told. People like to say Thai shows only do school romances, but you only have to look at what’s been recently airing to see that’s no longer the case. We’ve got: rebirth revenge?? but bad at it actor; secret prince joining Royal Hunger Games; historical romance set during WWI; vampire romance (which admittedly included school stuff for some reason); second chance romance set in a newsroom; superpower omegaverse with car racing; and sports bl around boxing. Sure, GMMTV did and does tend toward school stories, but they originated as youth-oriented programming, and a lot of the books they’re drawing from are about high school or college students, likely because they’re mostly written by students.
Korea: It’s no secret that my personal biggest issue with Korean BLs is that I think they are often too short to fully explore a story. This does go back at least in part to them mostly being adaptations, because the writers will include things that are from the original and then won’t have time to explore all of those in an 8 episode show of 30 minutes or less each. Some shows have done a pretty good job of it—Semantic Error, for example, even if the ending is a little rushed—but others you can really feel that something is missing and you don’t get the full experience of getting to really know the characters. I also think sometimes the directors prioritize being artsy over doing things that serve the story, which makes for things that look good but that don’t resonate as well for me.
Another personal complaint that I have, aside from obviously how KBLs, especially early ones, feel like the characters don’t know what sex is, is that the characters often feel very isolated as queer people because they’re the only ones and no one around them knows. This applies to Japanese BLs too, and there’s some truth in fiction there, but the vibe it ends up having is like, these aren’t actually gay guys in a way that reminds me of early 2000s slash fic. I can’t explain it.
Japan: As I mentioned, I think Japanese BLs are often way more repetitive than people are willing to acknowledge—maybe it’s just the recent ones I’ve seen, but a lot follow a formula of “meet as kids/students, something happens to separate them, meet again as adults/older students,” often with compulsory heterosexuality or sad salaryman life involved. There’s also a very common relationship dynamic of nerd/unpopular/loser character + good at everything/popular/beautiful character, and the conflict in those stories is almost always only about that dichotomy and the anxiety it causes.
Are these stories usually well-executed? I mean, yes, one thing JBLs unequivocally have going for them is very good character-driven plots, but so far they haven’t done a ton of series adaptations of the truly insane BL manga that are also high quality in production. And so many of them are sad even when they have a happy ending.
China: It’s so funny to me when people name drop China and then cite, like, The Untamed as an example. As my cousin’s Chinese wife complained when talking about her daughter being into it, “She likes the gay boy but he isn’t even really gay in it!” Which made me laugh so hard.
I haven’t seen enough to actually make a judgment call, but obviously when you take out the romantic arc, you have to focus more on the main plot, which has its benefits but also, like, it isn’t a BL anymore. As for the two currently airing, my main thing is just, get rid of the dubbing! Who cares if they speak accented Mandarin or whatever, the bad dubbing is so distracting to me. My general issues with Chinese shows apply—dubbing, convoluted plots that aren’t always clear (this may be a translation issue), and absolute bonkers episode breaks. Like, mid-conversation episode breaks. I’m used to it at this point, but I still don’t like it.
Taiwan: To be honest, I think Taiwan is maybe the most consistently good quality, but they don’t have as robust an industry and so the growth has been slower and for me it’s harder to make a sweeping statement about their strengths and weaknesses. If anything, the pace is sometimes slow, and there isn’t a great deal of experimentation in style, so something made today doesn’t feel terribly different from one of the original HIStory shows. Lately, they’ve been adapting popular danmei (RIP season 2 of The On1y One), so I’d love if they were able to get the rights to some of the things that can’t be produced in China.
Currently Watching
ABO Desire: Speaking of things that can’t be produced in China—or at least not aired on Chinese platforms, since this morning it got yanked from the Chinese-based streaming services. But it’s still on Gaga and Viki apparently, so I can get my trashy omegaverse fix.
This is the only show I’m up to date with, which probably says something about me. I prefer to think that it says that I love absolutely deranged characters like Hua Yong, which is true. I went into this without knowing anything about the plot and expecting literally nothing, and was shocked to find that it was a) compelling and b) obviously made with money.
Like, it also made me cry-laugh when we got the long voiceover section about how omegaverse was caused by a widely contagious respiratory illness that is Definitely Not COVID except for how it’s obviously based on COVID. And the whole visible pheromones + the little images that show up on their hands to indicate their scents is undeniably silly if also kind of necessary. But what this show focuses on is the interpersonal dynamics (and business dynamics) which are enhanced by the omegaverse aspects rather than defined by it. Even if Hua Yong wasn’t an enigma (lol) and this was a normal world, he would still find a way to be a complete psycho worming his way into Shaoyou’s life. And that’s what’s great about it.
It also just hits on so many good tropes of omegaverse on top of that. The secret omega with suppressant sickness Gao Tu; the over-the-top powerful alphas; someone else hiding how powerful they are (I don’t know how long enigmas have been a concept in Asian omegaverse since the first I saw of them was Pit Babe); and Hua Yong weaponizing every weak frail omega stereotype to lure Shaoyou into his web. Every time he gives those big sad doe eyes, I’m like SHAOYOU RUN!!!! YOU’RE IN DANGER GIRL!!! I mean, the danger is that Hua Yong will get him pregnant, which this show actually acknowledges unlike Pit Babe, but still. As my friend said while watching it, I can see the original danmei dialogue as I watch it, and that’s magical to me.
Finished
Pit Babe 2: Speaking of omegaverse, this ended on Friday and I truly have almost nothing to say about it. The world-building of this show is so…weak…and so the scale of Tony’s threat always felt somewhat hollow, particularly when they would keep hinting that the plan was to non-consensually knock up Babe but never admitting that’s what they were hinting at. Like, how many people know about the superpowers? What does alpha even mean in this universe when they won’t acknowledge mpreg?
To be fair, I also just don’t care about Babe and Charlie that much, so it’s hard for me to be moved by the amnesia plotline (lol), and Jeff and Alan were great in season 1 but, like, mostly just plot-devices in this one. Really, the main issue is that there were just too many characters this season that they were trying to give genuine time to, and not enough focus on the relationships between people who aren’t dating. Even though I love them, I don’t think we needed North and Sonic, and I actually think everything with Chris was just a distraction. He was an okay red herring, I guess, but I think he could have been removed from the plot without much issue.
Whatever, I think it’s done for good this time, and even if Kenta just vanishes at the end, that leaves room for my How Kenta Gets His Groove Back vision. And they stopped trying to make me care about racing at the end.
Now I’m off to catch up on Revenged Love since I have, like, six episodes to see.
urs,
hk