Our Top BLs of 2024 || S5E1

[@chasscidmore]

I always enjoy your annual Top BLs of the year episode. Your different insights are useful to me, and I often agree with many on your lists. This year I am including two shows that technically finished in 2025 (Our Youth and See Your Love), but because they both finished within the first eight days of January, I feel it is okay to include them in my Best of 2024. I fully agree with Pixie regarding Our Youth. It is now my favorite Japanese BL (and I have watched over fifty series/movies from Japan) and one of my very favorite shows overall. I personally struggled with multiple characters in My Stand-In and I ended up dropping it, and I found it challenging to handle the trauma in Let Free the Curse of Taekwondo, so that show is still on hold for me. For me, this has been my favorite year for BLs. I really enjoyed the variety and quality of the shows. 1) Our Youth - Japan 2) Love in the Big City - South Korea 3) Jack and Joker: U Steal My Heart! - Thailand 4) The Sign - Thailand 5) See Your Love - Taiwan Honorable Mentions: 6) I Hear the Sunspot - Japan 7) Marahuyo Project - Philippines 8) Blue Canvas of Youthful Days - China 9) Unknown - Taiwan 10) Love for Love's Sake - South Korea 11) Only Boo! - Thailand 12) Monster Next Door - Thailand

[@LoveCastTheBLPodcast]

Ooooh yes love the list and the honorable mentions - so many that we loved as well!

[@pitterpater2273]

I look forward to this episode each year! Next time I shall be patient, lol. I can agree with Pixie on My Stand-In - I only watched the first episode, but I wasn’t able to get into it at all. Same with Let Free the Curse of Taekwondo, which I LOVED (and unfortunely only just watched this year), but the editing could sometimes confuse the hell out of me and it took a lot of brain power to put together what was going on or why we got to where we were. Anyways! My list of 2025: 1. Anti-Reset (Tawian) - helped me get out of a very bad case of BL-block which is why I became so obsessed with it so quickly. Not a perfect story, but I loved the leads. 2. I Became The Lead in a BL Drama (Japan) - Made me laugh till I cried, super over the top and dramatic, but that’s what I love most about Japanese BLs. 3. Takara’s Treasure (Japan) - Really good plot and really good actors. Fell in love with it immediately. 4. Century of Love (Thai) - my introduction to DaouOffroad and they did NOT disappoint. I love these reincarnation/soul-searching stories, I hope we get more. 5. Two Worlds (Thai) - Very surpising one on my list, but I really enjoyed it overall. Nat’s acting has improved greatly, and it’s telling in this series. Honorable mentions: My Love Mix Up (mostly for Half and Mudmee who I loved to death), This Love Doesn’t Have Long Beans, We Are, Cherry Magic Thailand, and Sahara Sensei to Toki-Kun.

[@LoveCastTheBLPodcast]

Ooooh thanks for sharing why you loved these shows! Definitely interested in checking some of them out~

[@analyzationm]

I WAS THINKING I don't know if you guys have done a all time top 10 bl list. I'm really curious which bls would make it on your all time, this is the most close to my heart, type of list

[@LoveCastTheBLPodcast]

I actually don’t think we’ve fully sat down and done an episode listing our all time faves wow 😳

[@analyzationm]

@LoveCastTheBLPodcast MAN I would love to know them fr

[@LoveCastTheBLPodcast]

We will have to put that on our episode idea list! Though you can definitely get an idea of what shows would be at the top just from watching through various EPs 🤭

[@pinwino5183]

hearing kayla talk about pitbabe makes me wish you guys had done a full review for it

[@tallactordude]

I don’t see nearly as many series as you do, so I have fewer to choose from. If we are taking series that ended in 2024 that I have seen every episode of, my top five would be: 1. Cherry Magic (Thailand) (number 4 in my all-time BL list) 2. Wandee Goodday (which I personally thought got better as it went on) 3. Last Twilight (the ending didn’t bother me as much as it did a lot of people, though there were a couple of moments that I found problematic) 4. The Trainee (one of the most underrated series of the year for me) 5. My Love Mix-Up (Thailand) (an unpopular opinion, I know) Honorable mentions are Only Boo!, which I also really loved, and Jack & Joker, which I can’t give a final score to because I still haven’t seen the last episode.

[@LoveCastTheBLPodcast]

Love to see some love for the Thai adaptations of CM and MLMU 👏

[@ceeaich]

@@tallactordude Cherry Magic (th) was really good! :)

[@sprinkles4375]

Our Youth is so good! I did not include because see it as 2025. It is exceptional! A must see!

[@Freckles929]

Great ep! My top 5 (of shows that came out in 2024 at least) is probably Jack & Joker, Century of Love, We Are, Wandee Goodday, and Kidnap, in that order, but also The Heart Killers is shaping up to possibly be my favorite BL of all time, so really it's my actual #1 even if the whole show hasn't aired yet. 😂 Things still could go downhill tbf but I'm optimistic.

[@LoveCastTheBLPodcast]

I think Pixie really had to fight herself not the include The Heart Killers on her list 🤭

[@sprinkles4375]

Alexa, I am with you on Let Free the Curse of Taekwondo! Love it! The acting and story superb! The love scene when they reconcile was not explicit but said more than other over the top scenes. Beautifully done in many aspects.

[@delioncourt34]

so interesting to hear your lists! it's fun to see how different everyone's tastes are. my list feels goofy in comparison but as for my own Top 5: 1. 4 Minutes 2. Love in the Big City 3. Dead Friend Forever 4. Monster Next Door 5. This Long Doesn't Have Long Beans. honorable mentions are High School Frenemy and Peaceful Property which were my fav shows of the whole year but not """technically""" BL's you know? 🤣

[@LoveCastTheBLPodcast]

Not goofy at all! Like you said, we love seeing how different everyone’s tastes are and what shows resonate for different people~

[@sprinkles4375]

I absolutely adore Only Bo!

[@lottieisfashion]

I would say ones I loved that weren't mentioned were century of love and Knock Knock boys!

[@LoveCastTheBLPodcast]

Both of which I need to watch ASAP bc I always hear such good things!

[@wafflesbyhaeun]

To be honest, 2024 was an absolute amazing year of BLs for me, some thrived and some flopped, yet personally, my top 5 BLs were:- 1. Century of Love (I LOVEEEEEE DAOU AND OFFROAD) 2. Wandee Goodday 3. Cherry Magic (Thailand) 4. Only Boo! 5. We Are and some of my honorable mentions are :- 6. This Love Doesn't Have Long Beans 7. I Hear the Sunspot 8. Love For Love's Sake 9. 1000 Years Old 10. Battle of Writers (YEAH IK ITS A LITTLE LACKY BUT I LOVE TUTOR YIM SOOO THAT MAKES UP) Yeah, so maybe some of them are bad, and due to my highschool I was not able to watch some of the amazing BLs released in 2024, so yeahhhh, the ones I watched are the ones I stacked up.

[@wafflesbyhaeun]

ALSOOOOOOOOO ADD ON, Peaceful Property which lies under the bromance category yett TayNew's chemistry there really hit off with such developed relationships and plots, cried and smiled along with such amazing actors.

[@LoveCastTheBLPodcast]

So glad to hear it was a great year for BL for you! This is an amazing list 💖

[@wafflesbyhaeun]

@ Yeah.......Wish me luck with my exams though. They start from the 14th.....Valentine's Day whoooooooooooo????!!!!!!!!!!!

[@LoveCastTheBLPodcast]

Oh mannn best of luck! I’m sure you’ll kill it!! 👏

[@ceeaich]

Feeling a bit of fomo, I didn’t get through as many new shows as I’d have liked to last year 😅, but here’s a loosely ranked list from what I managed to finish 👍: 5th- Two Worlds 4th- Wandee Goodday 3rd- Monster Next Door 2nd- Century of Love 1st- My Stand In

[@LoveCastTheBLPodcast]

Ooooh love to see Two Worlds on the list 👏

[@sprinkles4375]

I have long been a Yin and War fan and never thought any work from them would not make my favorites list. It pains me to say it, but for me Jack and Joker was awful. It tried to be too many genres at once and none of it worked for me. I did not get the humor at all, especially when it bounced from serious to funny in one scene. My favorites are My Stand In, The Time of Fever. let Free The Curse Of Taekwondo, Love For Loves Sake, and Love in The Big City.

[@LoveCastTheBLPodcast]

So fair, not everything works for everyone! Love to see your list~

[@byakugan0889]

Kayla - love how you talked about being whelmed and not like super loving a lot this year. I felt the same. I think it's nice that the industry is big enough that like a show can be good and enjoyable and not like super ultra important. I think it's good to have just regular nice shows but it does make it difficult to watch so many when fewer and fewer shows seem to have the magic of some of the giants of the last few years Pixie - I wanna check out Our Youth to see how it compares to My Beautiful Man! I don't think Japan can do anything better than Kiyoi and Hira for me but I am curious! My Stand In - definitely one of my biggest surprises of the year. I only started watching because I saw a screengrab of Up in a black mesh shirt and that caught my attention then I started watching and was just wow, genuinely surprised. Poom as Joe just had me because I just wanna [REDACTED] respectfully. But yeah the characters and huge levels of toxicity were also surprising and kinda refreshing to get out of Thailand. Up really surprised me and Mek did as well, didn't know they could give me such awful characters that I wanted to see so much. My Top 5 of 2024: Century of Love My Stand In 4 Minutes Cherry Magic TH Dead Friend Forever Had a hard time with 4 and 5 - also could have done Peaceful Properties or The Trainee. But yeah I had to go look through my tumblr and texts to see what I was talking about this year lol 2024 seemed like a harder year to figure out my favorites than the last few years

[@LoveCastTheBLPodcast]

Yessss! There was so much to always be watching but it definitely felt like it was harder to narrow down what resonated or really stuck as a top fave!