Hometown's Embrace (2021)

BL with a somewhat different flavor

When I started watching the series, I found certain aspects of it reminiscent of A Tale of a Thousand Stars, from the setting to the music. There is in fact a direct allusion to Thousand Stars in Episode 2, when the teacher going to the village is told that things are not as pretty as they are in the series. This turns out to be pretty ironic--Hometown's Embrace promises to be a BL that has a grittier portrayal of life in Isan, but it really turns out to be more or less the same in the way the characters fight the bad guys a tad too easily. In fact, Thousand Stars might be more realistic in some respects.

This is not to say that Hometown's Embrace is a rip-off or a bad one at that. Hometown's Embrace is a much more conventional BL than Thousand Stars in the way that it features three BL couples and seemingly men, including seemingly straight ones, can simply fall in love with each other. While you don't find passionate kissing scenes, let alone sex scenes, the series goes out of its way to feature gratuitous shower scenes while doing an obligatory product placement for a soap company that is obviously one of its sponsors. (Incidentally, there are also plenty of product placements for some Black Dragon pills, and I got a good laugh when I googled "Black Dragon pills" though I have no idea if what turned up on my Google search was the same as what was featured in the show.)

What makes the BL somewhat different is the violence in the show, which involves four of the main characters' parents being killed by the villains. The series uncomfortably straddles fluff (for the BL) and gritty realism (for the violence). It does manage to pull off the merging of genres somewhat, but somehow runs out of steam. By the time the main characters band together to deal with the villains, they seem rather comical. (Just look at the costumes!)

Perhaps the series would have been more compelling if it had double or triple the number of episodes for both the crime aspects to be featured and the romance to be developed. This way, the characters would be easier to take seriously. Unfortunately, for an episode of only 8 episodes, it spends three episodes introducing the three pairs of main characters (one episode for each pair). It's still a watchable series to me, but if you are expect one of those BLs with lots of kisses and sex scenes or a realistic portrayal of gang violence, you will be disappointed.

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