#starring:

Mysterious Lotus Casebook (cdrama)

Impossible to summarize or encapsulate the show that completely rewired my brain chemistry, altered my understanding of myself and of the art of storytelling, and forced me to learn how to make gifs in order to properly express my unceasing love and adoration for the show and its characters simply because mere words were not enough. I truly believe MLC is a masterpiece, and it is far and away my favorite Asian drama of everything I've watched (The Untamed included! gasp!). Quick logline: A former jianghu prodigy (Li Lianhua, né Li Xiangyi) disappears after suffering a terrible loss and reappears a decade later as a (quack) wandering physician. He's terminally ill but desperately tries to keep that on the DL. He's also extremely burnt out and doesn't quite keep THAT on the DL.

Story / themes: ★★★★★ MLC is a beautifully crafted wuxia drama at the very least. It also presents a fascinating metanarrative regarding the stories we tell about ourselves, and the stories others tell about us. And it's an undeniably and staggeringly poignant queer narrative in so many ways -- the show follows three characters who exist (or want to exist) at a remove from conventional patriarchal and heterosexual norms. (Further reading on this after you watch the show, since these glorious metas certainly contain spoilers: @rinbylin on the jianghu as a queer space, and on Li Xiangyi's femininity, and @potahun on MLC presenting two particular perspectives on queer experiences.) Finally: I always judge a story by its ending, by how well the narrative and emotional threads are tied up, and MLC executes on this flawlessly. The ending is tragic in a way that evokes the best tragedies of any time or medium: inevitable and cathartic, even while you're weeping your face off and shaking your fist at the sky. But it's also purposefully murky; you can interpret it in a couple different ways, which is SO FREAKIN' BRILLIANT for a show about a character desperately trying to escape the conventional narrative. (On that note, don't miss the special bonus episode after ep. 40!)

Bromance: ★★★★★ You've got two m/m ships to choose from, or go full OT3. One is shifu / disciple with a delicious infusion of identity porn, the other is a pair of archnemeses who got so messily divorced it tore apart the entire jianghu and gave our main blorbo a terminal illness, which his archenemis now will stop at nothing to cure so that he can fuck fight him. Pining gazes, fond gazes, small smiles, intimate stabbing, declarations of undying devotion... it's all here and it's all delicious. What I love even more is that you can read them all as ace, aro, bi, gay, etc... and their relationships feel rich and intimate no matter what label you personally want to assign to each of them. That's good queer storytelling, baby!

Female Characters: ★★★★★ Spoiler-heavy, so don't check it out until you've watched this, but I wrote a whole post about how much I adored the women in this show. One of them starts out a bit tropey, but pulls her shit together at the end in a way that is emotionally and narratively cathartic. This is definitely a male-led show, so the women really are mostly side characters, but they do shine in the screentime allotted.

Production: ★★★★★ Definitely on the higher end for cdramas, but not ostentatious. The music, however, is what really gets me. The trio's song is HYPE, and the theme that plays during all the sad parts is beautifully lilting and mournful.

Angst & Hurt / Comfort: ★★★★★ Cheng Yi character god's favorite whump magnet!!! We love to see it!! Cheng Yi also has a lot of crying scenes in the show and every single one of them will eviscerate you. Plus: Classic cdrama, I know, but I'm sure 90% of the budget was fake blood. And the emotional angst hits even harder, if you can believe it.

Thing that got me to watch the show: I saw a gifset of this h/c scene and it was off to the races. <3

-> My MLC gifs (beware of spoilers!)

Weak Hero Class 1 & 2 (kdrama)

This one totally sucker-punched me, which is appropriate given that the show is mostly boys beating the everloving shit out of each other for 30+ minutes an episode. I say that so you know what kind of visceral violence you're getting into when you turn on this show, but the reason I cannot stop thinking about it is because of the gut-wrenching emotionality behind every punch thrown, the rage and vulnerability behind every split lip and broken bone. Our POV character is Yeon Sieun, a quiet (nearly silent), sullen, neglected high school student who's at the top of his class academically. The series plays out as the universe asks him the question, "Aren't you tired of being nice? Don't you just want to go apeshit?" ("...But also unexpectedly discover the Power of Friendship(tm)???")

Story / themes: ★★★★★ For me the devastating core of this show is about how hurt people hurt people. But the small, fervently whispered message underlying that theme is that friendship can heal all wounds. I mean that literally. The love was there, AND it changed everything (hat tip to @lmxpsuedonym's great post, which is sorta-spoilery, if you want to go in totally cold).

Bromance: ★★★★★ One could blithely categorize the main pairing as a classic example of the sunshine one and the stoic one, but that's just scratching the surface. Even calling them a "pairing" feels reductive. Definitely could be read as extremely gay, but for me this core relationship isn't straight, isn't even queer, but is a Secret Third Thing, a thing that rewrites the entire narrative with bloodied knuckles and quiet desparation. That's not even to mention the third member of the season 1 trio, or the season 2 friend group, who all contribute additional levels of self-destructive yearning and explosive devotion to the mix.

Female Characters: ★★★★★ There's one recurring female character and season 1 and I like her just fine. That's basically my standard for these shows. '^_^ So I'm giving this five stars because this is my rating system and I do what I want. =D

Production: ★★★★★ Brutal close-ups. Evocative slow-mo shots. Pristine editing. It's a Netflix show, so it's what I expect. But at the end of the day this one's all about the ACTING. My god, the acting. Park Jihoon went to the Wang Yibo school of microoexpressions and elevated it to a religious pursuit. The way he embodies his character, the hunched, haunted physicality, the deadened look in his eye... it's staggering. His character, Yeon Sieun, smiles a total of two or three times throughout the entire two seasons, and when it happens it's so gobsmacking that you'll need to lie down for 5-10 business days to recover.

Angst & Hurt / Comfort: ★★★★★ There's probably not a single episode where someone gets by unscathed. Definitely heavier on the hurt than the comfort, but the reason it works for me (I'm someone who looooooathes hurt / no comfort) is because the hurt is never dropped or forgotten about -- it's just momentum deferred. You KNOW that boomerang's gonna come back swinging. So when the comfort or release DOES come, it feels even more cathartic.

Thing that got me to watch the show: It honestly might have been this 5-second clip, which got me wondering, "oh are they ACTUALLY in love? Guess I'll have to watch to find out." The heart!! And idk why I can't find the beginning of that clip but Ahn Suho pulls up right next to the bus and literally says "How come we keep crossing paths? Were we married in a past life?" Yes. Next question.

-> My WHC gifs (beware of spoilers!)

The Devil Judge (kdrama)

My very first kdrama love. This is a show that asks: How would you like your toxic yaoi, gentleperson? And the answer is: Yes. The Devil Judge follows Tragic-Yet-Starry-Eyed Judge Kim Gaon as he is tasked with taking down Tragic-And-Also-Unhinged Judge Kang Yohan. Will they fall in love find common ground in a corrupt judicial system???

Story / themes: ★★★★★ The show is billed as "dystopian" but feels imminently reflective of our current reality: Kang Yohan and his glass-cutting cheekbones preside over a reality show court of justice in which the guilt or innocence of defendants is voted upon by the masses via an app on their phones. It's a great premise, but it's far from the most resonant part of the show. The elements that highlight TDJ to this very respectable pantheon of My Favorite Dramas are the meditations on whether true justice can ever actually be achieved, and whether redemption and forgiveness are possible -- or even desirable -- in such a relentlessly corrupt world. Plus, the unfolding of Kang Yohan's backstory and the final revelation of how he became the man he is at the start of the show is not only deliciously tragic, but also a brilliant rug-pull to get the audience to rethink every seemingly deranged action of his and whether it all might actually be justified.

Bromance: ★★★★★ The writers of the show frame the story as a "seduction" narrative, comping the core relationship to Mephistopheles / Faust and Beauty and the Beast. So, the intent is definitely there. As for the execution? *VIBRATES AT A NORMAL INTENSITY* Can you say STABBING AS A LOVE LANGUAGE? Moving into your "~cOLLeaGuE'S~" gothic mansion to recuperate after shielding him from an explosion? Strapping a bomb to yourself because you think ya boi is DEADED? Taking "I can fix him" vs. "I can make him worse" and turning both up to 11??

Female Characters: ★★☆☆☆ Okay look. Fridgings like the one that happened in this show usually immediately have me abandoning said show. It's a mark of how stupidly amazing everything else in TDJ is that I just kinda fumed about it and then compartmentalized it. (I actually literally forgot about it until doing this write-up. RIP.) At least there ARE other women in the show, and (most) of them don't end up dead from Stupidly Preventable Scenarios. Gotta take the w's where you can, right?

Production: ★★★★1/2 Beautifully shot, glorious fire motifs throughout, and perfect angles of Kang Yohan's abs. The music left a little to be desired, and kept kicking in overdramatically during intense moments but hey, it IS a kdrama.

Angst & Hurt / Comfort: ★★★★★ I've pretty much covered this topic (also: see below) so you can just rest assured that it's the 👌👌 good👌👌 shit👌👌

Thing that got me to watch the show: This gifset, which is honestly just a small sliver of H/C from the entire show. I'm a simple girlie what can I say!!!!

-> My Devil Judge gifs

Link Click (donghua)

Time travel narrative, white-haired / black-haired doomed* yaoi, the sunshine one and the stoic one... this show might have been crafted in a lab to appeal to me personally, but I KNOW this hits the sweet spot for a lot of us as well. Join me in hell!!

(*Okay the show's still going so there MIGHT be hope for a happy ending, right? ...right?? RIGHT??)

Story/ themes: ★★★★1/2 Starts out as a case-of-the-week show in which Good Buddies Lu Guang and Cheng Xiaoshi used their timey-wimey powers combined to "dive" into the past via polaroids, and solve cases. Then it gets sad, and then it gets VERY sad, and then you find out the central conflict of the A plot, and then you're just sad forever. (Shout out to the lesbian noodle couple, maybe the only happy ending for a case??) Kinda unfair of me to judge this one as is, since it hasn't ended yet, but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do in order to get everyone to watch her fave shows. Even then, this is a tricky entry to write because the central brilliance of this story is also the biggest spoiler. Let's just say Link Click really digs deep on the inherent tragedy of time travel in a way that I, a massive nerd who wrote her master's thesis on time travel narratives, am feral for.

Bromance: ★★★★★ What's gayer: kissing on the lips or [REDACTED]? I promise you it's [REDACTED] but you'll just have to watch the show to find ouuuuutttt! Also, fwiw, the first part of the show's name in Mandarin (Shiguang Dailiren) is also the ship name (Cheng Xiaoshi + Lu Guang = Shiguang)... no idea if it was on purpose but it IS insane!!

Female Characters: ★★★★★ Qiao Ling my beloved! She's such a badass and she has the best outfits. She's currently the only one of the trio without powers... unless...?? (please watch this show)

Production: ★★★★★ The animation has no right to be this stunning. The moodier shots are framed beautifully as well. The music slaps and also rips your heart to shreds. Here's the baller season 1 opener, which I'm sharing instead of the season 3 opener, which turns me into a puddle of pain every time I listen to it, but I won't share it here because -- say it with me! -- it's a huge spoiler.

Angst & Hurt / Comfort: ★★★★★ There is a LOT of h/c for our main blorbos, especially when the show starts to serialize a bit more. Season 3 / Bridon arc literally felt like an (amittedly top-tier) assortment of Ao3 tags. As for the angst? Let's just say barely a day goes by where I don't feel the need to sue this show for Emotional Damage.

Thing that got me to watch the show: It was this hilarious (non-spoilery) graphic.

The First Shot (cdrama)

Ostensibly a show about a narcotics investigation team but it seems like the only thing the writers care about is the capital-F Feelings which is great because hard same.

Story / themes: ★★★★★ The show navigates ideas about personal and communal guilt and morality, while the two male leads, Gu Yiran and Zheng Bei, each wrestle with their own individual ghosts and grief. We're also treated to heartbreaking ideas about redemption and forgiveness (clearly I love this theme), and at what point -- if ever -- those become unreachable. This show also has an unforgettably tragic yet impactful ending that felt earned and devastating in all of the most gutwrenching ways. I cannot stop thinking about it.

Bromance: ★★★★★ So much touching. So many pet names. Neck-clasping AND maybe the most intense and deeply emotional hug in cdrama history. "But there's only one bed" is literally a canon line actually uttered in canon. The other unhinged line "Maybe I want you to stay" (....for the case, bro, for the case.) This show is the epitome of Be gay solve crimes AND Be gay do crimes. While flirting, angsting, and pining.

Female Characters: ★★★★★ *pulls up a chair* *swings it around* *sits down backwards* I would die for Yaoyao, do you understand me?? The One Female Cop trope is dumb, but the One Female Cop Who is More Feral Than All the Guys? Chef's kiss. (I didn't love Zheng Bei's sister but it's not her fault she had to be shoehorned into a het romance. Sigh.) Also: this show far and away has my favorite workplace found family of all time. They have my entire heart and soul.

Production: ★★★★★ The manpurses, the beige clothing, the old computers, the orange filter, the high-waisted jeans, and did I say the manpurses? Damn, the '90s vibes are impeccable.

Hurt / Comfort: ★★★★★ This is a homoerotic Chinese crime drama, what do you expect? Well, my expectations were met and surpassed. (Is that a rare m/m bridal carry? YES.) There is also quite a lot of angst, of course. Thank you, waiter, the meal was delicious.

Desire Catcher (cdrama)

Every day I wonder why this show isn't more popular. For me, it hits most of the my personal checkboxes: sunshine one + stoic one, mutual pining, tragic backstories, so much angst and h/c. It has shades of Under the Skin, but is, IMO, infinitely more devastating.

Story / themes: ★★★☆☆ The premise leaves a bit to be desired (HA) -- Lu Fengping is a reonwed hypnotist who is brought in by the police to consult on a bunch of hypnotism-related cases. I mean, sure? I guess? And the ending (understandably) smells of justice system propoganda, but... enough about the PLOT, I'm actually here for...

Bromance: ★★★★★ ...the trope that REALLY has me chewing glass, which is healing of joint mutual trauma through pining and eyefucking and betrayal and more pining. Did I mention the pining? Luo Fei and Lu Fengping spend at least five minutes every episode gazing into each other's eyes RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY SALAD while a dramatic ballad plays in the background. There are quite a lot of Wangxian similarities here, too -- if you loved being wrecked by watching the Emotionally Taciturn One trying desperately to save the Smiling but Quietly Suffering One from his own self-immolation, then boy, do I have the duo for you.

Female Characters: ★★★★☆ Yeah okay so here's where the content warnings rear their big red flags. One woman's brutal murder and another (very young) woman's brutal sexual assault essentially serve as the central motivations for both our male leads. Don't love that. However, the one who is still alive does have a lot of agency and a rich interior life, she's not just a discarded side character. Also -- this is getting into spoiler territory, but it's something I'd personally want to know -- the female lead does not end up in a romantic relationship with either of the two male leads, despite the fact that it might have been an easy trope to pigeonhole her into (falling in love with her "savior(s)." She is treated with respect and care by these characters, without any expectation of romance. I LOVED her quiet strength and determination.

Production: ★★★★★ There are some beautifully framed landscape shots, but I was mostly blown away by one specific moment where a character is losing his mind with grief, and the sound cuts out and the camera zooms outside the room, and we DON'T get to be there with him and his pain, and I have never been the same since. Also, everyone who made the decision to not edit down the two male leads' gazes lingering on each other for way too long in any given scene, congratulations on your Nobel Prize. Thank you for your service.

Angst & Hurt / Comfort: ★★★★★ Yes. Wonderful, delectable h/c. Angst like you wouldn't believe. All of this was basically already covered in the bromance section, so I'll leave it at that, but, god. I am such a sucker for this show.

Thing that got me to watch the show: Once again, a hurt / comfort scene. lol. After you watch the show, though, do yourself and settle in for this INCREDIBLE crackvid by @mistbornthief which is truly a masterpiece.

-> My Desire Catcher gifs

Aaaand the best of the rest...

Tomorrow (kdrama)

Tomorrow is about a ragtag group of grim reapers tasked with preventing people from dying by suicide (while wrestling with their own suicide-related tragic backstories). I probably went through a whole truckload of tissues watching this show; each episode left me absolutely blubbering on my couch, and I don't think my sinuses have been the same since. This shouldn't be surprising, given the plot -- each story arc focuses in on someone at the absolute lowest point of their life, and shows us precisely how they got there. (So please consider the plot before diving in, if this is a sensitive subject for you.)

Who could ever beat peak protagonist Goo Ryeon? She has an ironic pink bob, wears power suits, spent her earlier career as a grim reaper catching and beating the bejeezus out of abusers and rapists. Woman of all time. Also starring Lee Soo Hyuk in peak edgelord mode and Rowoon in peak puppydog mode. Speaking of puppies, I will never recover from the dog episode.

Mystic Pop-up Bar (kdrama)

Tomorrow was, embarassingly, the only show on my list with a main female protagonist until I discovered Mystic Pop-Up Bar, which is actually a perfect comanion piece: Like Tomorrow, Mystic Pop-Up Bar centers around a prickly, semi-immortal character tasked with displaying generosity to strangers as penance for past misdeeds. Where Tomorrow goes for the gut, Mystic Pop-Up Bar goes for the heart... but this one still had me weeping at the end just because I knew I was gonna miss the characters so damn much. This show contains THE found family of all found families -- a total chaos gremlin with a chip on her shoulder, her hapless, long-suffering partner, and their newly adopted baby deer. Mystic Pop-Up Bar also has the exceptional honor of getting me to ride or die for not just one straight couple, but both straight couples! What can I say, they all match each other's pathetic dorkwad energy in a way that completely captures my heart.

Let Free the Curse of Taekwando (kdrama)

Congrats to the ONLY actual BL on my list! (See below!) To the surprise of no one who has gotten this far into this post, I like my BLs like I like the rest of my dramas: devastatingly angsty, thematically resonant, and simmering with tragic undertones. (If anyone has BL recs based on this, please hit me up, I am starving here.) I wasn't actually too sure about this one until I finished it, because I found a lot of the time jumps SUPER confusing. It was only after I finished the show and realized that the jarring cuts and edits were an intentional way of demonstrating the unreliability of memory and the tragedy of miscommunication.... well, color me shooketh.

Love for Love's Sake (kdrama)

Congrats to only the second BL on my list! I avoided this one for a while because a) the title is just not appealing, especially to my aromantic heart, and b) I have a tough time with BLs that don't feel the need to generate anything remotely related to plot or character development because the main draw is "EVERYONE'S GAY, HOORAY!" This gentle, devastating little BL is the exception that proves the rule. (Don't worry, though, every main character IS gay.) Love for Love's Sake has a straightforward concept -- a depressed 29-year-old gets isekai'd into a virtual game, where he must make the main character happy, or die -- and the show uses that set-up to force him to come to terms with his own unhappiness (or die). I'm such a sucker for stories that involve characters semi-literally confronting an embodiment of their childhood selves / trauma, thereby learning to love themselves, and this show takes that trope and cranks it up to eleven. The ending was so cathartic, the parting lines so profoundly beautiful, that my eyes were puffy for days after crying so hard. My heart will be aching for a very long time, in a very good way.

Under the Microscope (cdrama)

An underrated historical cdrama gem. Zhang Ruoyun is better known for his lead role in Joy of Life, but he does truly fantastic work here as an autistic man who uncovers a tax revenue inconsistency during the Ming dynasty. Sounds riveting, right? Well, that just speaks to the high level of acting and production in this 14-episode miniseries. Oh, and Feng Biyu could punch me in the face and I would thank her for it.

The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty (cdrama)

This one is definitely higher on everyone else's lists, but I felt that the plot dragged a bit (I'm just not a huge fan of court intrigue) and I was personally always a wee bit irritated by twink extraordinaire Tang Fan. Also, there's another egregious fridging. Still, Sleuth has SO MUCH going for it -- the most exceptional implementation of "food as a love language" threaded throughout the whole show, excellent action sequences (the show was notably produced by Jackie Chan!), some truly unbeatable h/c, and a totally endearing sibling relationship. The production is top-tier as well. Which reminds me, I will now take this opportunity to link the most amazing fanvid of all time, which makes me fall more and more in love with the show every time I rewatch this video.

Oh No! Here Comes Trouble (Taiwanese drama)

Each character on this show is so richly developed and deeply traumatized and I love them with all my heart. Pu Yiyong and Cao Guangyan match each other's cringefail loser energy at a level never before exeprienced by humankind (PS at one point they start regularly sleeping in the same twin bed for...reasons??). Until, of course, Chen Chuying came along with her overeager cop energy and put them both to shame. Then, of course, there's Pu Yiyong's mom, who spends her time getting into more fights than her son and trying to sneak beer into hospitals. GOAT!

The thing that bumped this show onto my list, though, is the acrobatic mix of silly shenanigans and devastating tragedy that somehow, against all adds, actually mixes together and works. There is one scene towards the end which is seared into my consciousness for how traumatizing it was. And then there's Pu Yiyong's laughably dumb mullet. I won't tell you which category that belongs to.

Peaceful Property (Thai drama)

The only Thai drama on my list, and weirdly it isn't even a BL? It totally should be. Anyway, Peaceful Property serves a similarly delicious cocktail of inane silliness while sucker-punching you in the gut, especially with the cases of the week. Also like Oh No! Here Comes Trouble, it centers around a character who can see ghosts (so silly!!) and then uses that premise to tenderly pry apart the many layers of grief (my face hurts from sobbing!!). This show almost didn't make my list because there's a line at the end where the antagonist literally says, "Kudos to the power of friendship that you survived that accident" but you know what? He's right and he should say it.

And, natch, it was this h/c gifset that got me to watch the show.

A League of Nobleman (cdrama)

Also known as the League of Polycules. This show packed so much bromantic hurt / comfort into 29 episodes, and it's all glorious. The two leads set the standard for dramatic divorce by swordpoint in the rain. No one's doing it like them. There is also a noodle stall, literal sleeve-cutting, guy finding a lost kitten, and the evil hot serpent guy from Yin Yang Master: Dream of Eternity playing an evil hot ex. Beautiful production, too.

Kei x Yaku / Ouroboros / MIU404 (jdramas)

My podium of homoerotic crime-solving slash revenge-taking jdramas, which traverse the spectrum of silliness -> angst. Ouroboros is pure dark heavy doom and gloom, but I was compelled by the show's unwavering commitment to the bit (the bit = revenge at all costs). MIU404 is on the sillier end of the spectrum, as the leads drive around in a melon-bread van as undercover cops, but they have that insane chemistry that has me reading smutfics on my phone about them at 1AM. Then there's Kei x Yaku, which is so homoerotic it's honestly kinda queerbaity, but it also offers up so many delicious bromantic tropes on a silver platter. Plus: shared tragic backstory trauma!

-> My MIU404 gifs

Pledge of Allegiance (cdrama)