The last five years has seen C-dramas turn BL novels (danmei) into adaptations (dangai) that soften the same-sex romance into bromance for mainstream television airing, with a few streaming C-dramas that hew to the original BL storyline directly. That was halted late last year as part of the government crackdown on cultural excess and deviation which was hard for what was a big genre suddenly getting slammed shut. Over in K-ent, the hasn’t been a broader BL drama or BL-tangential drama push the same way as in C-drama land but this month a recently premiered streaming drama on small platform Watcha is getting notice because it’s going up and up on the viewership tracking across all streaming platforms. The K-drama is called Semantic Error and stars fresh faces Park Seo Ham and Park Jae Chan as students in an opposites attract college romance. Last week it hit number 2 on the streaming rank just below hit drama Twenty Five, Twenty One which is number 1. Viewers of the drama are giving it good reviews and the mainstream K-media is taking note and wondering if the BL genre is possibly heading towards mainstream in the coming future.
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As someone who remains upset that the BL in The Devil Judge had to be censored like in The Untamed and Word of Honor, I am ALL for this! That drama was queercoded, but dramas like WWW: Search were pure queerbaiting and finally (finally) allowing the stories of LGBTQ people in the mainstream allows for all the baiting to just stop and end the unnecessary shoehorning of a straight romance in dramas where the same-sex leads have way more chemistry.
I adored Thai bl drama Bad Buddy and I love kdramas, so I should check this out! I’d be thrilled if the love stories in mainstream kdramas were possible with more kinds of love.
As an avid BL watcher from 2017 knowing that YG has a contract to make shows with Thai TV company GMMTV and maker of my favourite BL series. Always thought Korean drama values would translate well with BL but wasn’t sure the narrative would be welcome, this is awesome news.
Park Seo Ham is not so new. He was in the Kpop group KNK. He started to act in 2017.
The last year or two years ago, there was a famous BL KDrama but I don’t remember the name. But it was about one guy from a rich family and the other was his bodyguard/friend.
I’ve been tracking korean BLs just because I was wondering if they could be the next version of Hallyu. BL fans are really loyal, loud, and huge on social media so korea should bank on that after China killed their potential golden goose, although it being such a conservative country it looked like a hard goal to reach. Almost all (with very very few exceptions) the korean BLs so far have been very low quality and unremarkable even by nugu low budget shows standards. It would be interesting to see if they actually develop a decent industry there with quality offerings.
I haven’t watched this one yet but gonna check it out later when I have a little bot of time.
I’m enjoying every episode so much! It’s addicting and I can totally see why it’s getting this much hype, especially on social media. Episodes are short but well-directed and there is such a good chemistry between the leads. I hope to see more korean BL dramas in the future.
Park seoham is finally getting the break he deserves. His visuals was always topnotch but his idol group was never popular
I believe saechan is an idol too. He played a role in Idol The coup’s online marketing videos as a manager for the group and was very cute in it
Sad to hear. Unfortunately the same-sex BS is being pushed in our faces more and more. BL dramas in the C-ent category are based more on friendship and have been hyjacked by the gays turning it into something which it’s not. The loss of innocence is a world wide pandemic, feeding the confused minds of many young people today, this is not helping in anyway what so ever. Same sex becoming the new norm, unacceptable.
So true!
I’ve watched most of the (limited amount) of kbls, and the one thing they have in common is a fairly low budget because they are from new, indie production houses, and thus are lacking in at least one area: production value, script, acting. Watcha is an established webdrama maker (of the het variety) so they know how to storyboard and and make their scripts fill the run time, and they can attract actors with a bit more experience. Also they just have more budget in general, and it shows, so their dramas look and feel like mini versions of their mainstream counterparts. Their other bl from last year, Light on Me was also a big hit and had great production value.
BL is already mainstream for the international fan base thanks to such good productions from Thailand. I doubt any country can top Thai produced BL. Even GL dramas are good in Thailand. They just got the romance and chemistry down. Even beating out heterosexual on screen couples. It would be hard to create this in other Asian countries since I don’t think it’s a genre too widely accepted yet. Sad but true.
What GL dramas in thailand? The only ones i know haven’t even aired yet, except from the one side couple in secret crush on you.
Last one I saw was Club Friday with Paula Taylor and Woosen. GL isn’t as famous as BL in Thailand but they exist. One of the most famous one is Yes or No. That was a good one.