When ViAn was announced I was hoping for a catboy romance with at least a hint of steam to make up for all the ways in which Choco Milk Shake failed (I love CMS so much, but it should have been poly and there should have been some sweet snogging). I mean, look at the pretty (in ridiculous outfits):
So I've suffered through the vertical made for fucking TikTok format, I've actually cheered at how they did a neat bed scene angle for that specific format, I've suffered through so much contrived arguing, I've yelled at the screen to make catboy more cat ffs (CMS did that beautifully, ViAn seemed to give up on his cat-ness around episode 3) and still cooed whenever there's been a touch of cat behaviour, and every single week I've wondered if there's gonna be any plot.
I suppose the answer to that last bit is a firm no.
And there's so much plot they could fit in, even with short little episodes in a horrible format.
How did An turn human? How did he learn to act more or less like a human? Lots of potential there. They keep dropping little bits of Vic struggling with his family and his sexuality, how about using that for Vic's character development? What's with all the silly jealousy nuggets that don't go anywhere, with the neighbour and the ex there's meat for actual jealousy drama? How about expanding on the loneliness theme that's also sprinkled over some episodes?
I get the feeling they brainstormed plot bunnies for fifteen minutes, wrote some scenes for each, shuffled the notes and called it a day script-wise.
Maybe that's on purpose, to just drop cute catboy-and-human scenes into the never ending hellscape of vertical video for consumers to gobble up and forget about, but it makes for really dissatisfying watching when you're expecting a show. Maybe it's me approaching it the wrong way. That's a rhetorical question, naturally, because I'd get very indignant if watching a series as an actual series is the wrong way.
I'm very curious about what a new watcher will make out of ViAn when binging all 12 episodes.