Top 10 BLs without an HEA still worth watching & the 3 that will wreck you
I came to BL via the Thai oeuvre and as such I initially thought one of BL’s defining features was a guaranteed “happy ever after,” like modern day romance novels. It remains one of the things I personally look for and rate highly in BL. But it actually isn’t a requirement of the genre.
There are a few offerings out there that even HEA obsessed self, still thinks are satisfying and worth watching, even though they don’t include a strictly happy ending.
1. Ingredients the series (Thailand) - the characters end up a couple but apart, since one of them is going away to pursue his dreams, it’s understood (but not depicted) that they will eventually be reunited.
2. Addicted Heroin (China) - the show was censored mid run so it remains unfinished. If you stop watching after the main sex scene in the final episode it makes for a pretty solid HFN ending. If you don’t stop, it just sets up the next plot point that never happened.
3. 2 Moons 2 (Thailand) - is kind of a must watch for Thai BL because the original source material is one of the most popular BL novels in Thailand and is responsible for many Thai BL tropes (like pink milk and sharing an umbrella). The main couple PhaYo is the least interesting. They get together, only to then end on a cliff hanger, which is why 2M2 is on this list. However, no one watches for PhaYo. We all watch for ForthBeam and MingKit and both of these side couples get HEAs.
4. Gen Y the series (Thailand) - a bloated drunken mess of a show but the main couple MarkKit is wonderful, full of super saccharine cheese while simultaneously poking fun at Thai BL tropes. It’s the opposite of 2 Moons 2 in that the main couple ends up HEA but all the side couples are left up in the air.
5. HIStory 3: Trapped (Taiwan) - is a great mafia action romance, and while the main couple ends up together, they’re anticipating forced separation, so it’s HFN. The fantastic side couple ends up HEA, though.
6. Silhouette of Your Voice AKA Hidamari ga Kikoeru (Japan) - a beautiful sweet slow burn romance between a grumpy seme who is going deaf and the loud sunshine uke who is one of the only people he can still hear. The ending is amorphous, we aren’t sure if they will get together or not.
7. My Tee AKA Cause You’re My Boy (Thailand) - such a confusing show told partly in flashbacks but without distinguishing those flashbacks so you’re never sure exactly what's going on. The story and directing are bonkers but the characters are awkwardly endearing. The main couple ends up HFN but at medical risk. This is probably only worth watching if you are a fan of the early Thai BL high school shows (Love Sick, Make it Right) and the pulps that followed them. What’s good is that these two were given a follow up Our Skyy with an HEA.
8. My Dear Loser: Edge of 17 (Thailand) - the BL arc is for a side couple but they are a GREAT side couple. If you slogged through Puppy Honey for OffGun or Kiss Me Again for TayNew then you can do MDL17 for PluemChimon. This is one of the better high school offerings. The main couple (het) ends up HEA but our boys end up HFN. However, these characters were also given a follow up Our Skyy that solved everything.
9. HIStory: Stay Away from Me (Taiwan) - technically speaking this one is HEA, it’s just that they don’t really end on a kiss, but more platonically together and since this is a stepbrother trope that make the whole thing a bit amorphous. Of all the HIStory series, many of which could have done with second seasons, I really wish this one was the one that got one.
10. Advance Bravely (China) - the second major victim of censoring after Addicted, if you love WoH you owe it to yourself to watch Gong Jun playing the spoiled rich kid sunshine uke role against an utra buff hot bodyguard grumpy seme. If it helps, GJ still has his fuck-off fan. The ending is straight up WEIRD but basically HFN?
I Feel You Linger in the Air (Thai ) - I truly loved this time travel romance. IFYLITA is an exquisite BL, from filming techniques to narrative framework (much like Until We Meet Again). Steeped in history and family drama it edges into lakorn (but no as much as To Sir With Love and with way less scenery chewing). This is an elegant and classy BL... from Thailand which normally doesn't even try for classy. The main couple (both as a pair and individuals) were excellent, particularly Bright (Yai) whose eye-work acting style is a personal favorite of mine. Pity about the ending. Oh it wasn’t that sad but it wasn’t good either. This show should easily have earned a 10 from me except that it fumbled the… erm… balls. Argh. Whatever. More here.
(I do not include shows like Love Sick or Make it Right where the second season solved the non HEA of the first.)
3 BLs That Will Destroy You
These are fantastic BLs that have extremely tragic endings. Each one starts out so perfectly gloriously BL that if you end up watching them to their conclusion they might actually wreck your psyche.
1. HIStory 3: Make Our Day’s Count (Taiwan) - of course this is number one on my list. Basically it’s a pitch perfect BL with all the best tropes, high heat, and great chemistry between two sets of couples.
The main couple features BL’s premier hot himbo jock who falls so gloriously ridiculously goofy in love with the quiet timid broken nerd he once bullied, that it almost hurts to watch him yearn that earnestly. The couple battles the demands of school, family, and society, rising above it all and moving in together into domestic bliss and then... the nerd is killed in a car accident.
AND THEN H3 graces us with two additional episodes of watching our beloved himbo SUFFER FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE. I can hardly bare to type about it.
2. Forbidden Love (Japan) - gah it’s so pretty. It’s the servant who grew up in the sinister mafia-esk family trope, which I love. It’s a killer pairing of spoiled, rich, loose-cannon seme madly in love with the older, somber, moral-compass uke. It’s a second chance at love since the uke has been abroad and the seme has been waiting and spiraling and pining.
It goes right up to the edge of “yes they’re going make it!” and it’s hot. And then... it dives deep into murder and incest.
3. The Effect (Thailand) - betcha thought Thailand wouldn’t make this section, but once upon a time even they dabbled in the darker side of BL. The Effect is Thailand’s commentary on the dark BL that forms its yaoi heritage. It’s also kind of an acknowledgment as to why Thai BL is so different from its roots.
Adorable uke is in love with the hottest most popular guy on campus. That guy is a typical ultra-controlling seme, and once he decides to love the uke back, he wants full ownership. The uke’s reticence with regards to sex and the seme’s internalized homophobia and terror about coming out combine into the worst possible outcome: physical violence, rape, self harm, and eventual suicide.
Basically it’s Thailand saying: look if we depict the type of possessive unhealthy relationship almost always shown in BL in a realistic light, this is the real world result. It’s almost worth watching because of that. It’s fighting the tropes we love with the reality of obsessive love, and it hurts but at least it’s honest.
“HEA is guaranteed” is an audience contract that comes to romantic cinema out of Western romance literary traditions. Basically the cinematographic version of a “happily ever after” is to end the narrative arc by visually depicting a kiss/hug, an engagement, a wedding, sex, or domestic bliss for the main couple (AKA Acts of Unity).
A guaranteed HEA is actually not a defining feature of BL on the whole. Although Thai and Korean stuff tends to lean that way.
Yaoi actually has more in common with the Western erotica genre than with traditional Western romances. That’s because in origin yaoi manga, the objective was the physical relationship of the main characters, not necessarily an emotional/romantic connection. Since BL comes out of yaoi, a great deal of it, especially the early stuff from Japan and China, is high heat but does not end happily.
Up until about 2017 when Thailand started to dominate the market, fully half of all BL (and prior to that even higher percentages) did not end happily.
HEA - happy ever after (as in “they all lived happily every after”) characters end up together and happy in the Disney fairytale romance sense of the concept
HFN - happy for now, characters end up together but there’s still tension or looming threat to their unity
amorphous - things are left up in the air either intentionally (common in indie and art films) or unintentionally, because the show did not get a second season/installment, was censored, or lost funding/cast
tragic - one or both characters die by suicide, murder, or accidental death (AKA kill the gay)
This is an extra to my series on top 10 BLs from each country coupled with a history of BL.
