absolutebl:Best High School BL from Each Country JAPAN: Seven Days (2015) 10/10Japan’s po
absolutebl:Best High School BL from Each Country JAPAN: Seven Days (2015) 10/10Japan’s poster child high school yaoi adaptation and still the best. KOREA: Light On Me (2021) 10/10 Korea’s fantastic high school love triangle friendship group in crisis. Color Rush is also excellent. TAIWAN: HIStory 2: Crossing the Line (2018) 9/10 Taiwan’s high school sports romance take CHINA: Addicted Heroin (2016) 8/10 China’s remarkable entry, still full of the destructive obsessive love and warped power dynamics yaoi loves, sadly cut short THAILAND: Love Sick 1 & 2 (2014-2015) 7/10 Thailand dominates this genre, but it does so with mainly BL pulps, so I never rate them very highly, Love Sick is the best of a rough bunch VIETNAM: Follow My Sunshine (2021) 6/10Vietnam only has a few, this and microfilm Hay Rival, I LOVE YOU!. I happen to like the romantic conceit of Rival better, but Sunshine is probably more fitting of the genre since it has enough screen time to hit all the tropes. (Stupid Boys, Stupid Love is also good) I chose only BLs where the high school setting is actually the primary location for shooting and/or is key to to the life state and experiences of the protagonists. To that end both Takumi-kun and Great Men Academy deserve a mention since they utilize a boarding school setting, which is super common in teen romances globally. However, Takumi just isn’t very good, and there’s honest debate as to whether gender body swaps qualify as BL, so while I actually really like Great Men Academy, it may not count. There are a few Pinoy ones but I really haven’t enjoyed any of them. What narrative elements do we expect from high school BL? school friendships & student interactions a SERIOUS crush uniforms & desks strained family dynamic (for one or both protags) bildungsroman - journeys of self discovery & actualization (but not necessarily coming out) What romance tropes are ubiquitous? friends to lovers forced proximity miscommunicationobsessive love What BL tropes are common? confession faen fatal (usually a GF) face caress hair drying supportive bestie(s) flirting over phones cooking for/with him stepbrotherssignificant (often dropped) hand holding rooftop (or isolated remote location) assignation tsundere/sunshine pairings (that can go either direction so far as seme/uke is concerned) My Top 10 High School Set BLThere are 55 high school set BLs on my spreadsheet.Light On Me (Korea) 10/10Color Rush (Korea) 10/10*Seven Days (Japan) 10/10HIStory 2: Crossing the Line (Taiwan) 9/10Given (Japan) 8/10Where Your Eyes Linger (Korea) 8/10*Addicted Heroin (China) 8/10Love Sick (Thai) 7/10Make it Right (Thai) 7/10Second Chance (Thai) 7/10* A couple of the Korea’s offerings are less about high school than they are using it for set dressing.Kieta Hatsukoi which is airing right now will likely end up pretty high on this list, but endings are really important to me so I never rate until a show is over.(source) -- source link