APOTHEOSIS

My Top Picks for 2025

The following are my favorites BLs that came out in 2025. These all received a BLISS Rating score of 5 Stars and are ranked in order of my preference.

1. Secrets Happened On Lichi Island | Hong Kong | Drama*
2. Top Form | Thailand | Romance
3. Shine | Thailand | Drama
4. The Journey To Killing You | Japan | Thriller
5. Bad To Bed | Taiwan | Thriller
6. Young Hearts | Belgium | Romance
7. Depth Of Field | Japan | Romance
8. Winter Is Not The Death Of Summer But The Birth Of Spring | Thailand | Drama
9. My Little Ghost | Vietnam | Fantasy
10. Awaiting Dawn | Vietnam | Romance

• Secrets Happened On Litchi Island. This is a prestigious and matchless piece of artistry and cinematic enchantment as well as a screenplay paragon. It is like watching a cinematic treasure. One of the best BLs ever made. (Thailand)
  
• Top Form.   This is a BL about a BL. It will capture you from the moment you begin it with its raw emotions and intense depths of personas. Their lovemaking was off the authenticity chart. It is sensuous, erotic, hedonistic, and completely mesmerizing. (Thailand)
  
• Shine. One could write volumes about this series and still not adequately describe its impact on you about a story steep in the counter-cultural revolution. It breathes life into what once was in a breathtakingly genuine and honest fashion. One of the best ensemble casts. (Thailand)
  
• The Journey To Killing You.  A deeply reflective and pensive journey for hating someone to loving someone yet never able to say the words. Both protagonists are cut from the same cloth and each and both supplement and complement the other. Dark but never fatalistic. (Japan)
  
• Bad To Bed.  Confusing, confounding, convoluted, and deeply disturbing. Yet, at the same time, it is simply brilliant. It is a stream-of-consciousness journey through the mind of an emotionally disturbed young man and another man who understands him and loves him unconditionally. (Taiwan)
  
• Young Hearts.  So much more than a coming-of-age film. It is a painfully and secluded introspective sojourn of a 14-year-old-boy to self-discovery and self-acceptance. While a love story, it is more of a pilgrimage to finding oneself with actors who were 14-years-old, giving it total authenticity. (Belgium)
  
• Depth Of Field. This is a remarkable and almost surreal symphony of emotions. Feckly brooding and doleful, yet somehow empathetic and relatable.  It is intense and deeply reflective and one of the best dedicated love stories of this year.  While subdued, it is astonishingly impactful. (Japan)
  
• Winter Is Not The Death Of Summer But The Birth Of Spring.  Because of the singularity theme and focused storytelling, this amazing BL is refreshingly different and told in a way that we can truly understand the misery and loneliness of prison life through carnal pleasures guised as love or is it?  (Thailand)
  
• My Little Ghost.  This is a soft, gentle love story of a transcendental nature that is told in humanistic and moralistic terms relatable to our everyday world. The story flows so masterfully and naturally that I found myself both crying and laughing. The name of the game is – forgiveness.    (Vietnam)
  
• Awaiting Dawn. A simple basic story of ordinariness and a love connection fraught with doubt and insecurities but foundationally as solid as a rock because both want it to be so. This is a softer GL component that intersects in the story but runs parallel in development.           (Vietnam)
  

*This has been a banner year for quality series but my choice for Magnum Opus, perhaps of this decade, is  “Secrets Happen On Litchi Island.”  By far, one of the most remarkable stories I have even seen. It is a masterpiece of artistry and cinematography. It is poetry on celluloid. For those familiar with the artist David Hockney, it has taken his paintings or his impressions thereof, and turned them into living, dynamic pieces of art.  Coupled with not only a coming-of-age story but an uncertain journey to love that intensifies into a meaningful connection.  It had me hooked from the very first moment. Truly, this is like a work of living art and watching a play in a theater-in-the-round yet with an intellectual twist and esoteric flair to give it an added dimension, all at the same time. This series just feels so real and genuine and honest and most of all sincere.

Here is where the Honorable Mentions must be given their due. All of these received a BLISS Rating of ★★★★★ as well and are worthy of the status of being on the Top Ten List as well. As I stated, this was an exceptional year, and it was difficult to narrow it done to just 10. Therefore, these series fall into a category that merits particular consideration. The following  are listed in no particular order of rankings.

• Paris. A simple basic and relatable love story with Paris representing a fantasy for a dream come true. Only to realize that maybe love can be found closer to home. (Brazil)
  
• Close To You. This anthology is composed of 4 unrelated love stories told so delicately that you might miss the intensity that lies underneath each of their love stories. Every tale is different in terms of poignancy and message. No doubt one of these love stories is relatable to every one of us. (South Korea)
  
• Delivery Guy.  A raw gritty salt-of-the-earth story of two men falling in love where that is both illegal and against all religious and societal norms. It is eye-opening in a most basic and simplistic way. (Nigeria)
  
• I Promise I Will Come Back.   From its title to its content, this is a story of fantasy love and romance in a far-off place. Unless you have experienced that yourself, it will slide past you. Your first time love all with moonbeams and unicorns but alas only for a short time, sadly. (Thailand)
  
• The Red Envelope. Part comedy, part tragedy, but all heart. It is a story of love between a gay ghost and a straight man who end up loving one another in the most unorthodox and yet deeply personable way imaginable. It is a love so intrinsic and basic it transcends even death. (Thailand)
  
• Delivered The Series.  A short BL that is an intellectual masterpiece that approaches love not with magical thinking or idealogue notions but with a serious discourse of who the main protagonists are. They are not archetypal models but ordinary young men, scared, and frightened of love.  (South Korea)
  
• 10 Things I Want To Do Before I Turn 40. Simply a great story of a mid-life crisis for someone who nearly gave up on living and did on finding love until he met someone younger who wants to be with him. Poignant and serene and astonishing real. (Japan)

My Top Picks for 2024

The following are my favorites BLs that came out in 2024. These all received a BLISS Rating score of 5 Stars and cover the gamut from Fantasy to Romance. These are ranked in order of preference.

1. 7 Days Before Valentine* | Thailand | Fantasy
2. A Blue Sky | Cambodia | Drama
3. Under The Oak Tree | Vietnam | Fantasy
4. The Spirealm | China | Fantasy
5. Playboyy | Thailand | Thriller
6. Unknown | Taiwan | Romance
7. Be Your Star | Vietnam | Drama
8. Love In The Big City | South Korea | Drama
9. Every You Every Me | Thailand | Drama
10. Happy Of The End | Japan | Drama

• 7 Days Before Valentine. A brilliant esoteric and profoundly moving series completed like a Greek tragedy and presented as a theater-in-the-round performance. We are only observants of their destinies and like them, powerless to change the inevitable. Changing places, would we still do ‘the right thing’?  It is one of the most comprehensive series I have seen and is exceedingly and painfully driven by the intensity of the characters. This series breaks the traditional mold of a Thai BL.
•  A Blue Sky. A remarkable story of unconditional love seen through the eyes of a young man whose whole world is his love. Yet, it was never meant to be. However, in a way they end up sharing more than they anticipated. A phenomenal and brilliant story full of cognitive dissonance that will rip away at every fiber of your moral being . An intense love story from Cambodia.
• Under The Oak Tree. What an astonishing duology and a musical as well. It tells a love story linearly with such painful reality. Yet the theme is redemption and a way for all of us to own up to our parts in the paths we choose for our own lives. This is a brilliant and astonishing BL from Vietnam with a handful of haunting and dramatic musical numbers to add to its ambience. 
• The Spirealm.  While not a BL in the classic definition of that term, since it hails from China. However, it is certainly an astonishing romantic story set in a realm of fantasy. It is one of the most creative and original series ever and presents a love story in a very interpretative fashion, melding fantasy and reality together. For those that love gaming and AI sprinkled with a heavy dose of intellectual romantic overtures, this is the series for you. This is an astonishingly entertaining saga and is a creative masterpiece.
• Playboyy.   A series much deeper than it is given credit for. It is a gay story and is an erotic roller-coaster ride through the world of homoeroticism.  It has one of the most eclectic ensemble casts ever and is focused on the rawness and explicitness of various forms of sexual pleasures all leading to love.  A very unusual series from Thailand.
• Unknown. It is dark, brooding, and exceedingly realistic. The characters are real people with real problems in real life actualities. It is one of the most intelligently thought-out and refined BL I have ever seen. It is a painfully charged emotionally gut-wrenching series from Taiwan, brilliantly acted and directed.  The decision to love is soul-searching and deeply contemplative.
• Be Your Star. This is an astonishing and brilliant series from Vietnam with such palpable emotional overtones and almost unbearable psychological pain affecting both protagonists. Right and wrong are blurred into a mist of gray. It is a traumatic love story but with an ending that makes everything feel like it will all be ok. All it takes is acceptance.
• Love In The Big City. This is a rare gem that tells such an aggregate story in an uninhibited way. Not from a BL slant but from a gay man’s perspective. It goes beyond classical definitions of love and allows us to see affection, devotion, attachments, friendships, and yes passion and intimacy all within its location of a big city but only as an afterthought. A breathtaking character study from South Korea. 
• Every You Every Me. An anthology of love stories, each unique and different, done by the same actors but with surprisingly completely different personas. While not all with happy endings, the one consistency is that they are always together. The last two episodes unveil the love story brilliantly as a cinema within a cinema but remain consistent with its theme. A different approach to BL storytelling from Thailand.
• Happy Of The End. Two astonishingly sad and irreparably damaged figures find each other and by tenacity and a lot of pain rise above that and fall in love. It is not so much a romantic love as much as it is one of an intense understanding and acceptance of each other’s malaise. There is such brilliant character development in this Japanese series. 

*My choice for Magnum Opus is  “7 Days Before Valentine.”  This diegesis is a breathtaking masterpiece of storytelling and acting.  It stands out because it presents a love story that had disintegrated and even though one had the power to magically make it ‘right’, nothing will make it so. The reason it became nonextant was not because of something outward but inward.  A powerful lesson to learn that the answer to love lies within you, yourself. The story provides us with a moral compass and forces us to see ourselves as we truly are. It is not a splashy or enchanting tale. All the same, it encompassed raw, deep, evocative, and profoundly introspective amorphisms about oneself. Perhaps even ugly ones. Yet, truthful and honest. It is a narrative of our own journey into the ugliest parts of ourselves. It forces us to confront who we really are. Yet, it does provide us with a redemptive choice with a chance to become better. That is its beauty, if you choose to see it.

If you have not seen these series, I highly recommend viewing these before they get lost to history. Sometimes, it is good to just stop and take a breath and see what is already out there before we tackle new ones. These 10 are the best of the best in 2024!