#absolute zero series

[beautifulmysteryisme]

I watched the Absolute Zero series about a month or two ago, and I hold it near and dear to my heart. At the point in my life, I was in a life slump. I needed something that wasn't my usual lovey dovey two protagonists meet story(which I absolutely eat up on a non-depressive episode).

I needed something with enough plot, but also not too much going on. Because yes, as an avid romantasy reader, there is such a thing as too much plot.

I was going through my tbw list and saw the name. I added it to my list immediately it was announced by Studio Wabi Sabi last year. I remember thinking, "NuNew sang an ost for this series, how bad can it be" (y'all know I love my NuNew).

Needless to say, it was exactly what I needed and it did it's thing.

If you can get past episode 1 that establishes the characters and storyline, you will enjoy it. Now, left to me, I'll rate it a 10/10, but that might be biased because, like I said, it came at the right moment in my life. The thought that I'd be getting home to continue the series helped me through some pretty tough days, ngl. So, there is some form of emotional attachment.

So, in an attempt to be unbiased, I give it a 8/10, great watch👍.

[heretherebedork]

A very elusive and rare double-hand-hold!

With a full on snuggle in the movie theater.

[santoshm]

Oh Wow!!

[heretherebedork]

Absolute Zero is what happens when someone writes time travel while hating their audience.

Because seriously.

Ongsa gets into a car crash on their tenth anniversary.

Suansoon goes back into the past, falls in love with teenaged Ongsa all over again but as an adult and tells him to stay away because otherwise he'll die on their anniversary.

Ongsa ignores him and meets him anyway and experiences the same ten year romance but wants to prevent being in the car crash.

Alt-Future Ongsa comes back and tells him that if he does that Suansoon dies in a car crash so Ongsa chooses to be in the crash.

While he's in a coma, all of his memories go back to the teenaged Ongsa (yep that's a thing now) and he chooses not to meet Suansoon which finally changes and ends the loop.

But Suansoon is also getting destiny averted flashbacks now, apparently. Oh, now almost everyone is getting echoes of adult Suansoon's no-longer-existence.

Oh, also, there's a Suansoon somewhere out there who did this loop and is now alone and is probably in the future of this timeline but we only saw him once for like five minutes. Thrilling. (This might come back but if it does it's gonna be so far removed that I dunno how I feel about it.)

And Ongsa is basically stalking teenage Suansoon instead of meeting him. Also, definitely 28 year old Ongsa in a teenage body now and just mourning everything. They even have Ongsa going to the movies he knows that Suansoon won't go to so he can relive the pain of choosing not to meet him.

Aaaand now the whole thing is coming out again.

Also, as a bonus, really bad CGI butterflies that follow directions absurdly well.

(The fact that their entire romance can only happen because of the loop of Suansoon going back to meet teenage Ongsa before they actually meet because if he doesn't do that then none of the story makes sense is the most frustrating thing in the world. That kind of time loop is the worst. Like, if Suansoon doesn't meet teen Ongsa then Ongsa wouldn't make so many choices and so he stops himself from meeting him but like... ugh, time travel.)

Why and how does the store owner have the letter from future Suansoon who has officially not come back to the past? Why does that exist? Excuse me, nothing else of his original time travel exists so why does that!? Oh, right, mystical old guy powers.

[heretherebedork]

I'm just gonna go slam my head on a desk, okay? Just... yup.

Damn time travel. Damn time streams. Damn idiots. Ugh.

[heretherebedork]

Okay.

Hmmm.

Absolute Zero giving me pause there. Because hmmmm.

So Ongsa is still going for the romance with Suansoon, even though he knows this leads to his death... but he's also not there in their future. He starts this and then he leaves again.

Honestly? It's fascinating. Suansoon trying so hard to find his love with Ongsa and set him free so he won't be hurt and then finding himself still in love but now alone and Ongsa, knowing his death/danger is lurking pursuing the romance but now with a dark cloud over him and the constant knowledge that he's likely to leave Suansoon and how Suansoon handles it and just...

I don't know.

I find it all fascinating. The idea of this love and how much they both need but now the constant looming idea of loss that has pervaded the story and filled them both up.

Ongsa no longer gets in an accident but now Suansoon wakes up alone in a nightmare he created, wakes up alone because he was trying so hard to save the person he loved that he destroyed his own life.

Suansoon went back in time to reexperience the love he had and to give Ongsa a chance to save his own life because he was rather he be alive than they be together but now he's living in a world where Ongsa is no longer in his life and his misery has overtaken any of the knowledge that Ongsa wasn't hurt and it's just a fascinating way to view love.

Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all or is it better to never love and so never lose? Suansoon was so sure it was better to save Ongsa by stopping their relationship but now he is living a world without that and he is destroying himself.

The hope he thought he would find knowing that Ongsa wasn't injured never happened. Instead he wakes up alone in a cold bed and he is realizing that now he doesn't even know where Ongsa is and that love that he took comfort from, the family he had gotten, no longer exists.

It aches. It echoes and it aches and Ongsa is questioning his own mortality while Suansoon has parallel lives where ones knows too much and the other knows too little and he is torn between the lives he has lived.

[heretherebedork]

Honestly, the bittersweet nature of Suansoon being alone for that entire decade (he never made friends in this life he lived? never had anyone that mattered?) and having to remeet all of Suansoon's friends and family who shaped him in one life but don't know him is a truly bizarre level of bittersweetness that is hard to describe. Suansoon is a man shaped by people who do not know him and a past that does not exist who never truly made a place for himself in the world he lived in because he was waiting for something that can never be the same again.

This is why time travel can be so fucked up, y'all.

[santoshm]

Contrary to popular belief the show does have some lighter moments.