War of Y (2022)

Psychological Drama disguised as a BL

This series was incredible. I couldn't even classify it as a BL. That wasn't the purpose of it. It wasn't a romance. This series was a psychological dark fiction drama. It took the BL industry and peeled back its skin and showed the truth. From the fans, to the managers, to the actors, to the writers, the producers, the directors, they showed it all. They took four stories and gave us a real look at what the industry does to people, and what the people do to the industry. The ugly truth and the twisted beauty in that truth. While doing all that they gave us incredible in depth characters and storylines, making us all the more invested, making it feel all the more real. Through the characters we watched love, revenge, betrayal, bribery, manipulation, trauma, passion, fear and desire. It gives you chills. I haven't felt this passionate writing a review for a series in a long time. It truly blew me away.

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Interesting topics but are they realistically portrayed?

Now, I'll say this show is a mess in so many ways so, I always find it funny when people make drastic comments like this is the best show on Earth or people who hate every single little detail of it.
I say this show is a mess because it is unusually long for a BL series that normally have 6, 8, 10 or 12 episodes... so reaching 20 episodes was something rare. And now, don't get me wrong, the fact that it had 20 episodes is not what makes this show a mess... it is the way the 20 episodes were handled. Having 4 stories lasting 5 episodes each would have been innovative if it was done properly. Instead, we have characters appearing in the first story that never appeared in the other stories. Can you honestly remember most of what happened on episodes 1-5 at this point? Probably not.

The plot of the whole series was to highlight or show people the worst issues, or the worst problems or the worst obstacles many actors, managers, producers and even companies have to face when doing a BL and it was a different concept from "Call It What You Want" and "Call It What You Want 2" as those series also wanted to showcase the worst issues inside the BL industry but the attempt started OK and then went to the toilet with poor directing choices in the plot and the storyline... This series wanted to bring different stories and get them their individual spotlight:

Episodes 1-5 had Billy and Seng acting as Nott and Pan almost immediately after we saw them in "Secret Crush On You". So, their previous characters were quite fresh in our memory and now each had a character that was the total opposite. That was good as we could see their acting skills, but sadly, this story was one of the weaker ones as the characters were not developed in a way I could fully understand their motivations to act the way they acted. From Pan being offered by his manager to one of the producers in order to get him commercials or a TV show or just money or him scrubbing himself quite harshly while taking a bath because he felt dirty or him not trusting Nott and his intentions of developing a real relationship, were just some of the plots that were never really fully developed. At some point I even thought this story will connect with the managers story and it kinda does but very marginally as Gus and Bew are the secondary couple in these episodes so nothing was completely handled plot-wise. This was probably the weirdest story of the 4 as Billy and Seng just appeared in these episodes and were not seen again until the final half of episode 20 despite having second credit after Lay and Muse (who also barely appeared throughout the show).

Episodes 6-10 had Gung and Korn acting as Gus and Bew... we saw this couple in "Y-Destiny" and they had good chemistry back then and they still do. That's probably their strongest point as their acting, especially Gung, remains a bit weak at times. They appeared in the first 5 episodes as the new BL couple trying to earn a spot in the industry but their main storyline focuses on their work and their managers. Now, I'm sure some managers do try to exploit or benefit from rookie actors who get poor advice from them but the way this was portrayed in these 5 episodes was quite exaggerated and 99% of the things we saw would merit some jail time for so many criminal acts. I hope that forcing one character to sleep with the other or to charm him so he could fall in love, sabotaging their own BL partner for their own benefit, hiring spies or having someone else spread rumors are things that happen in very few cases or this industry might be doomed already. I thing the plot twist of having Bew being the one who orchestrated most of the issues we saw, was good... but he is forgiven quite quickly by Gus and the two managers just go their marry way with another BL couple without really facing any type of consequences. And aside from some minor appearances in the first 5 episodes and being the main couple in these 5 episodes, Gung and Korn also disappear until the final part of episode 20.

Episodes 11-15 had Milk and Markpoom as Peak and Kla and I think if you want to really learn what happens inside an idol environment, you should just watch all the Korean singing reality shows where they train the young hopeful candidates in singing, dancing, rapping, and some physical conditioning. While that industry is also messed up in the way they value a cute face or a hot body and Korean idols have some quite insanely strict rules about their weight and their romantic life, the 5 episodes of Y-Idol were far too long. SoSatSeoulSay had a field day appearing on these episodes and having silly competitions with the trainees who then had to sing and dance in almost every episode (if we can call it that). War of Y wanted to highlight the obstacles some of the trainees (in this case, trainees for a BL series) might face like a bad or mismatched partner, a non-approving family, producers/networks who prefer a specific trainee over another, etc., but all these issues were poorly acted and not explored that much because of all the other drama they had to fabricate. Milk made his acting debut in this series and it showed because he was really one of the worst in terms of acting and I never really felt any chemistry between him and Markpoom.

Episodes 16-20 had Toru and First playing Most and Achi... we also saw this couple in "Y-Destiny" and in there they had some of the steamiest scenes on that mediocre series so everybody remembered them and anxiously waited for these episodes. They began appearing since the previous storyline as they were also part of the Y-Idol show. Once the producers manipulated the results, they were the winning couple and got their own BL series produced by Lay's character (P). In here, First had to carry most of the weight of the story as his character is involved with Toru's character for the series and also becomes romantically involved with Fern (played by Paper) a girl who is cast as an extra but who is secretly brought in to the series by P in order to spy on Most and Achi and make sure they don't break the "no dating" rule. This plot could have been the most interesting as First and Toru have a really good chemistry from their previous series and Paper's acting was quite good. The way her story was handled was quite disappointing as she is exposed as trans on episode 20 so P can save his production and Achi can keep his job... after a brief talk with Achi she doesn't appear again in the episode until the final seconds. We never got to see Achi's full background story which I think was key to establish his selfishness or his intentions. Most tells Achi in the last episode: "when you're cute, you're damn damn cute... but when you're bad, you're an evil person"... the lack of background on Achi made me wish would've gotten something more useful to understand why he acted the way he acted.

The last half of episode 20 has all the main actors returning for the Galaxy Awards and P magically wins the Greatest Y Award (using some of his scenes from "Y-Destiny") maybe related to the phone call he makes earlier in the episode to someone and to compensate the fact that the show he produced, lost (against the other 2 shows that ended up tying for the win) and his lead actor (Most) wins the Best Y Actor Award but he decides to quit acting to focus on music. Lay's character was a bit puzzling as he was supposed to be the senior Y actor looking over all the new rookies but ended up being like a leader of a mafia cartel but with zero background on his story and zero character development other than being a selfish jerk most of the time and having a Y series partner that appeared very few times and spoke even less.
The show ends with a silly montage of all the actors saying some things about the industry while holding the tiniest trophy ever given to what it's supposed to be the "Greatest Y Award".

I think this series had potential but the 4 stories felt quite disjointed despite having the main couple of episodes 6-10 appear in episodes 1-5 or the couples in episodes 11-15 also appear in episodes 16-20. I think Lay could have been the connecting factor in all stories but his role was quite narrow from being an "experienced" BL actor dealing with potential newcomers, to being a producer of a reality show, to being a producer of a BL series, to suddenly winning another acting award to remain relevant and also announcing that he wouldn't accept any more nominations so others can get the chance (hmmm... how generous of him!). Aside from that, each could have been a separate BL series on its own as most fit the current trend of just airing whatever mediocre product they can find as long as they cast good looking actors. One last annoying thing were all the social media posts that appeared on screen during the episodes as some were translated and some were not and the translations were placed alongside whatever the actors were saying, so it got very confusing and hard to follow all the text without having to pause the episode just to read half of the screen full of text.

The show ends with another of their polls asking if all the "War of Y" stories were true, would you believe it? I'll say that I would believe it but I hope the reality is not as exaggerated or as bleak as it looked in this series.

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