This BL actually has a pretty cool fantasy hook using the old-school mermaid legend, except this time around, it’s all about mermen. Because the concept was so different, I was really intrigued and wanted to like it, but after a promising start, it just falls into the usual BL traps with poor execution and some pretty bad acting. I’ll give the makers credit for coming up with a unique idea, but they just couldn't pull it off. In this world, mermen can live on land and blend right into human society, but there's a catch: during a full moon, they have to head back into the ocean to wash away "toxins" from their bodies. The show runs for 8 episodes, and each one is about an hour long. The story centers on Nawa, a handsome and charming mixologist at a popular bar on a small Thai island. He’s secretly a merman, a fact known only to the bar owner, Phana, and his close friend. Everything changes when a flirty stranger named Phu walks into the bar, sparking some serious sexua...
We meet Roberto Enríquez, a teenage dreamer in a small town who suffers constant episodes of harassment and who deals with a family situation of incomprehension in which his only support is his grandfather. We follow his journey as a teenager in school, his bullying, to his first few sexual encounters including rape in a park. Told to us through a non-linear fashion, we see his journey to present days as a successful writer and a pop icon figure, who constantly struggled with his body. We see multiple characters throughout the journey most importantly his castrating mother, loving grandfather, stifling father and ever faithful girlfriend Lola. Events are shown of his growth from an awkward teen, to a confident adult to a budding writer, who uses his real life story to write a book and share with a larger audience. We see a silver living when he finally meets the man of dreams who loves him for who is.
The miniseries tells the story in a tone of dramatic comedy, showing the protagnost's fight against all kinds of discrimination. The autobiography is emotional and fun, and is fundamentally focused on his fight against homophobia and with gordophobia, since Bop's body did not enter into the conventional beauty canons of society, in fact, that detail is constantly underlined, coming to focus only on that, so he leaves his achievements as a person out of the conversation. Through non-linear narrative style, the series tries to show us parallels between events in different timelines. The two main actors playing the teenage and adult version are so good that they almost look alike in many scenes. I have to hand it to casting of these actors. A very interetsing approach was to never show us the father's face. Just as the parent invisibilizes the son, now the son prefers to blur him from the story. The series proposes several narratives about the fear, pain and loneliness that exist in life, especially when we are misunderstood beings. The show is brief, emotional and sensitive, despite showing raw events of a person, but, in the end, despite his many mistakes, his narrative freshness weighs more, and ends up offering something new. (6.5/10)
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