Cherry Blossoms After Winter is a nice BL drama, but it has too many manhwa style plot points that it's better left on paper than in live action.

That being said, while most of this review will be a little critical, the drama isn't bad, especially the ending. The drama would be a better anime, rather than a live action.


PLOT:

As an young child, Haebom was left orphaned. However, he was adopted by Taeseong's mother, who was his mom's best friend. Despite Taeseong and Haebom being friends when they were children, after the adoption they grew apart. Taeseong is handsome and very popular, while Haebom feels he is inferior.

In their senior year of high school Taeseong and Haebom are put in the same class, where Taeseong learns that Haebom is being bullied at school. Despite the fact they live together, Taeseong hasn't really communicated with Haebom since his adoption. He feels the need to protect Haebom, while Haebom rejects the offer for protection, saying he only has one more year of high school. Haebom feels very grateful to Taeseong and his family that he doesn't want to cause them any more trouble, and is thinking of moving out after senior year. Taeseong isn't exactly happy about Haebom leaving, nor is he happy that Haebom doesn't mind being bullied.

As stated earlier, this drama has a lot of plot points that are better suited for manhwa or webtoons.
- Childhood Friends to Adopted siblings
- Adopted Sibling Love (Not really incest since they are not blood related)
- Bullying
- Non-con Kisses
- Popular Boy loves Bullied Nerd
- One-sided Love for over 10 years'
- High School Lover's Storyline
- College Lover's Storyline (My favorite!!)

While the plot points above don't hinder the drama, it does feel make it feel unrealistic, especially when you look at how each of the characters are portrayed. Haebom is innocent and naïve. He takes in all of the bullying and is surprisingly positive about it. Taeseong is stoic and has all of the girls screaming at him. He also is very attractive, strong, and rich. Even his mother is kind, caring, supportive, and totally not involved with her children's lives that she doesn't know Taeseong and Haebom haven't spoken to each other in ages and don't get along very well.

However, the magic of BL is still there and this drama is a good one time... or maybe two time watch. Taeseong's love for Haebom and all of the ways Taeseong protects and stands by Haebom is really the stuff of dreams. While I wasn't a fan of the high school storyline, I really enjoyed it once they got into college. In college, Taeseong is more expressive and really becomes a prince. Even Haebom surprises everyone by standing up to Taeseong's mom, and even proposing to Taeseong. Haebom, who had been hiding under Taeseong's love all this time, decided to wear his big boy pants and express his love to Taeseong! Finally!! Haebom makes the ending so adorable and sweet. I wish we had more time to see how them as mature adults, rather than as students.


Haebom x Taeseong

Haebom and Taeseong are adorable as a couple. During the high school storyline, they are very 2D, stereotypical manhwa characters, but in the college storyline, they grow out of it and become more expressive. In high school, Taeseong wasn't really leading man material. He did have the usual high school kinkga/princely thing going for him, but the moment he non-consensually put his hand on Taeseong, that really ruined his character for me. In college, though, he did redeem himself by being completely devoted to Haeboom without being very overprotective of him, so I enjoyed his character a lot. Haebom, on the other hand, doesn't really have a big character change, so in the ending when he puts on his big boy pants and expresses his love for Taeseong is a little left field for me. It closed the drama nicely, so all's well, but if we got to see him being more expressive leading up to him standing up to Taeseong's mom would have been great. Either way, they are a cute couple.


ACTING:

The acting here isn't very terrible, but Haebom was a little too mousy to be realistic. Other than that the acting was decent. Not terrible, but not great.


MUSIC:

I hated the music choices for most of the drama. The music itself isn't bad, but it felt like the production staff hired a high schooler from the 00s to choose the music. The music choices felt very amateur compared to the rest of the production.


OVERALL:

Cherry Blossoms After Winter was a nice BL. It was fun to watch, but it definitely didn't feel realistic. I would love to see an anime version of this instead though. Taeseong was very cute and adorable once he matured, so I want to see more of him. Also that ending!! I really, really wish we could see more Taeseong and Haebom as adults. Their student lives were dramatic, but their adult lives look like it would be a dream come true. I really would like to see it. We really don't need a second season, but maybe a special episode just to see what happens after the finale episode.