I really thought something was wrong with me today, after seeing all the rave reviews and comments, and I just wasn't seeing what everyone else was seeing. I even read 9 chapters of the webtoon to see if that would solve it. (More on that below).

The actors are competent, but they seemed to be directed to under-emote, Thai style, which de-Koreanized the series a bit, which is a pity. But still, they were solid, and this was beautifully shot. All the side characters had good actors too.

But the story didn't make a lot of sense emotionally. We never get a sense for why Siwon was so hostile to Daun - I kind of understood why, but it wasn't really demonstrated. And then his turnaround is sudden and unmotivated. All of this made it a little difficult to invest in the romance, and it didn't help that their chemistry was not very heated.

I think part of the issue is the original story is a comedy, and they turned it into a drama, and in the process stripped it of everything unique and interesting. In the manwha, Siwon is an outrageous, OTT narcissist, and Daun is an even more outrageous and more OTT narcissist - Siwon is already funny enough, but that Daun suffers from such severe narcissistic delusion that even Siwon finds it incredible is LOL funny. The other issue is that the first two eps are really slow and dull, and because I binged it I never really recovered from that.

But turning it into a very conventional romantic drama just makes Siwon an unpleasant person, which is unfortunate because he's kind of plain when he's hostile and really lovely when he smiles. Daun, instead of being kind of crazy is just a conventionally sweet guy, and Diwan's hostility is strange and assholish. In the comic Daun really is stealing his spotlight, which Daun takes for granted as the natural result of his beauty (he actually glows).

So the end result is a reasonably pleasant but dull and forgettable series. If it hadn't been released all at once I probably would have forgotten about it.

People in the comments section are saying things like "Korea's answer to ITSAY" - I certainly hope not, because I have very high expectatons for what a full-powered Korean BL can accomplish, and this series doesn't even approach ITSAY - this is more like Korea's answer to Fish Upon the Sky. I thought it was markedly inferior in every aspect except cinematography to the same director's Where Your Eyes Linger - which is not at all surprising as she's extremely talented (we need more female BL directors!) and she wrote the screenplay for WYEL as well as directing it.

As a minor note of no importance, I wish Asian dramas would stick with their original names - e.g. Cherry Magic's Japanese title is hilarious - and attempts at wordplay often fall flat. Because "blue" and "Ming" are both words, and Ming-dynasty porcelain is characteristically blue, putting them together just comes out blue Ming (i.e blue MING instead of BLUEming).

Summary: good and worth watching, but don't go in with expectations of an 11/10 or you'll be disappointed. Maybe watch the first two eps one day and then wait a while and binge the rest.

Edit: I had to look up this series on 13 May 2022 because I couldn't remember it. I kind of do now, but only vaguely. So I guess I was right and it's forgettable. At least for me. I do remember the Manwha, though because it was really funny.