Someone Else's BL Cartoon – Anime Review

Seung-Taek is an ordinary high school student who keeps to himself and minds his own business. Unfortunately, he gets bullied by one of his troublemaking classmates, In-Beom. As the tensions escalate quickly, they have a physical scuffle in the restroom. Seung-Taek successfully defends himself and knocks out his bully during the fight. However, he becomes scared when In-Beom falls unconscious and doesn't respond.

Just then, Seung-Taek's classmate Gyu-Bin enters the restroom. Gyu-Bin is concerned about In-Beom and wants to bring him to the nurse's office. Meanwhile, Seung-Taek is shocked, distressed, and worried about the consequences. If he reports the fight to the school authorities, this incident will tarnish his academic record and potentially impact his future. As Seung-Taek starts crying, Gyu-Bin feels sorry for his classmate.

Instead of letting Seung-Taek take the blame, Gyu-Bin lies about being responsible for the fight. Seung-Taek is surprised and grateful for what he did. He promises to repay this favour, although Gyu-Bin doesn't need anything in return. Eventually, the two teens become friends and hang out after school. Upon discovering their same tastes in music, they attend concerts and fan meetings together. However, Seung-Taek's parents are bothered that their son spends too much time with Gyu-Bin. They think his new friend is a bad influence.

You probably haven't heard of Someone Else's BL Cartoon, an obscure anime adapted from a Korean webtoon. The reason for its irrelevance is because this series sucks. The storytelling is sloppy, the characters have bland personalities, and the romance leaves little impression. Also, the visuals look plain and dated due to the low-budget production. The most outstanding problem is that Someone Else's BL Cartoon feels low-effort, as if the creators barely tried. I feel offended they made this rubbish and dared to call it BL.

I understand condensing a long webtoon into a short twenty-minute series is tricky. However, the difficulty isn't a valid excuse and cannot justify a poorly crafted narrative. I won't comment on the source material, but the story seems incredibly basic in the anime. It's as if Someone Else's BL Cartoon strips away all the flavour, nuances, and exciting details from this adaptation. What's left is a hollow plot that doesn't feel coherent, consistent, or compelling to watch.

Someone Else's BL Cartoon fails to create an engaging romance, unable to convey passion through the generic leads and their awkward interactions. Seung-Taek is an unappealing protagonist who shows little personality or redeeming qualities. Likewise, Gyu-Bin only distinguishes himself with a tacked-on tragic backstory. The couple goes on a normal BL trajectory until Episode 7 suddenly includes a scandalous nonconsensual encounter. This shocking scene feels inappropriate and tasteless, clashing with the innocent tone of the anime.

The narrative isn't paced smoothly, wasting too much time on tedious interactions and mundane developments. Those twenty minutes come and go without solidifying the relationship between the leads. Annoyingly, Someone Else's BL Cartoon has an incomplete ending since the series is discontinued after Episode 11. I believe they stopped producing the anime because it wasn't popular enough. Regardless of the reason, the disjointed conclusion is a huge disappointment. The cliffhanger leaves the story in a weird place and offers no satisfying closure to the viewers.

Someone Else's BL Cartoon looks unimpressive. The backgrounds are plain, the colours are dull, and the character designs are nondescript. You can tell it's a low-budget anime with minimal refinement and no embellishments. Its shabby visual presentation is just one of the many underwhelming aspects in this series. The uneventful story, unmemorable leads, uninspiring romance, and unfinished ending create an unpleasant BL experience. The bottom line is that Someone Else's BL Cartoon feels like a waste of time. I'd recommend watching something else instead.