BLISS RATING: ★★★★
“Death leaves a heartache no one can heal; love leaves a memory no one can steal.” – Richard Puz, The Carolinian
This is a noteworthy BL series because it goes against the traditional grain of usual Thai BL series themes. It is complex, full of angst, and emotionally painful to watch. While it is similar in nature to “Until We Meet Again’, in emotional tone, it never reaches the depth of that series, however. It should have, but never did. Perhaps the subject matter was too esoteric and the story way too convoluted to make sense in our world.
It is a rather intricate story involving a soul-reaper and a human. The soul-reaper named Tua (Karn Hongladaromp), is a stoic, reserved, serious and focused individual with highly complex emotional responses for someone who is deceased. Those emotions are hidden behind a veneer of unflappability and therefore never really revealed. The job of the soul-reaper is to guide the recently departed to their new direction.
Tua was once alive and named Sanya. Sanya had a brain tumor and while staying in the hospital befriended a young boy named Prakan, who had a bad heart. Prakan grows up to become a doctor just like his father. While soul-reapers are generally not visible to humans while working, he is for the adult Prakan. And the reason why that is the case is because they share something together that bonded them, perhaps forever.
The interactions between Tua and Prakan Nut Nutchapon) are both conflicting and endearing. Conflicting in the sense that Tua has a job to do and Prakan is trying to prevent him from completing that job. He misconstrues Tua’s intent. It takes a long time for Prakan to realize that Tua does not cause death but simply collects the soul after passing. But because of the misunderstanding, they ironically develop a closeness and intensity about their relationship that really is hard to describe. While love is obvious, there is such a complexity to their relationship that cannot simply be described by one word. It seemingly appears to be a predestined bond but yet can never fully or completely be realized in a human sense of the word.
This series is intricate and too convoluted to make any sense. It got lost in its own details and compounded by the superfluous silliness in the other characters involved. Most of the side stories are tangential at best, and downright ruses at other times. Rather than trying to explain, develop, and visualize what a relationship between a soul reaper and a human would look like, we are left to speculate and only see snippets. Instead of developing a love story, it only shows an unpleasant journey of living. It just never reaches a fever pitch where we can believe or honestly feel that Tua and Prakan are in love.
Who really S.T.O.L.E. this series? Tua has a partner by the name of Khett (Singto Thanatram). While supposedly a sidekick, he played this role with such conviction and understanding of what a soul reaper would be like. Retaining some of his human traits, he also is a realist in the underworld of soul reaping. He can relate to both what humans feel and what soul reapers really are and chooses to balance between the two rather effectively. His characterization of his role was seen in a multifaceted way. You could see those complexities. Sometimes a mediator, sometime friend, but also focused on his mission of bringing the souls assigned to him to their new path. In a larger sense, he was way more interesting as a soul-reaper than Tua was. He brought understanding to what he was doing and what he had to do.
The story itself is remarkably difficult to follow in all honesty. While the job of the soul reaper is to escort them on their new path, they never do. The soul disappears but the soul reaper remains. So, their outcomes left us feeling even more empty and frankly sad. The rules of the soul reaper are simply illogical and defy believability. (Seriously soul-reapers have a union)? If you establish a fantasy, you must set up rules that are believable and logical to our world; after all, it is for us. While they are dead, they can be corporal and be seen when not ‘working’. Yet, they can beam at whim. I can believe in any fantasy, if it is explained or shown in human logical terms, which unfortunately this was not.
It takes a long, long time for Tua and Prakan to develop a relationship. While they ‘love’ each other, it can never be fully realized. Prakan gets old while Tua does not. What should have been a touching scene when Prakan dies as an old man, it simply turns into a metaphysical peroration about how they might from a previous and current promise meet again by being reborn sometime in the future. For what reason is profoundly absent.
Again, I could overlook all of that IF the characters were real and seemed relatable as people. They seemed like only characters with no real depth or uniqueness that made us want to care. While Khett could show multifaceted aspects to being a soul reaper, Tua remained stoic, aloof, removed, with a constant smirk on his face that was a smile yet did not always seem to be so.
This should have been a profoundly moving experience to watch. It showed death painfully and personally and the characters involved in those deaths should have been deeply moving. Yet, for me at least, I was unmoved. It was not because of bad acting; it was because of a bad screenplay and a lack of a true focus. We never had a chance to mourn or feel their emotions. They showed the picture of death, but its impact felt empty with little sense of the depth that life lead, and no clear focus as to where the soul was going. I found it – wistful.
If this story was tighter, kept to having us feel something about these characters, and got rid of the illogical rules and regulations of soul-reaping, this would have been a way more impactful series. The acting is good, and the main actors are astonishingly handsome, and I might add, charming. The romance scenes between Tua and Prakan were at times, touching, But I never felt any serious chemistry between them. Even when they essentially pledge to give up everything for each other, it simply felt hollow and empty. One was ‘human’ and the other a ‘soul reaper’ and they always maintained that distance. The other relationships were thrown in because of the real lack of a serious story and direction between Tua and Prakan. Cute at times, but overblown, and honestly no chemistry between the other gay relationship and even less with the straight relationship.
I wanted to like this series so much that I kept whispering to myself, “It is going to get better and grab me.” But it honestly never did. Even the scenes of the death of loved ones just felt so empty and I never shed a tear. They were just scenes, well-acted for sure. But never connecting on an emotional level throughout where you could sense and feel that bond.
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