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rayjayyy

United States

rayjayyy

United States
HIStory4: Close to You taiwanese drama review
Dropped 4/20
HIStory4: Close to You
1 people found this review helpful
by rayjayyy
Aug 27, 2021
4 of 20 episodes seen
Dropped
Overall 1.0
Story 4.0
Acting/Cast 4.0
Music 1.0
Rewatch Value 1.0
This review may contain spoilers

Cliche and morally problematic

I generally support the BL genre and LGBTQIA+ representation in Asian film/media; however, this drama was ridiculously problematic and very uncomfortable to watch (despite only watching four episodes fully). To start, the 腐女子 coworkers. It's one thing to know those types of people exist in the world (sure), but to seem them portrayed in a BL drama to add nothing more than, well, drama felt tasteless. The male lead taking the advice of his 腐女子 coworkers in order to get closer to the female coworker he had a crush on led to some really awkward and borderline harassment situations.

Apart from that, I can look past the step-brother unrequited love arc, but I draw the line at this drama romanticizing rape. Not only is one of the male leads an obsessive stalker, he also assaults another male lead who seems "too close" to his stepbrother whom he is pining for. Take that a step further when he intentionally gets the stepbrother drunk and rapes him—let's not forget the jarring choice of music which would have you believe the sexual encounter could have been consensual. What really got me was how the characters talked about what happened post-rape and how either being "1" or "0" could have changed the situation. The fact of the matter is that one character took advantage of another one and violated them.
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