I so much wanted to love A Blue Sky, a Boys’ Love series from Cambodia. If you have read my posts in this group, you know that I regularly venture outside of the BL offerings from the big players in the industry: Thailand, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
Just last month, I wrote an enthusiastic story about an enigmatic trio of BL music videos from Myanmar. I have also spoken of stumbling across a BL musical from Vietnam, which I will be reviewing in coming weeks. Did I mention yet the interesting series from Indonesia that I watched last year?
So I really wanted my first review of a work from Cambodia’s nascent BL industry to showcase a stunning story about romance between two guys.
Sadly, I was stunned but not in a good way.
I won’t say it was awful but at one point I pleaded with the Dark Eldritch Gods to snuff out the entire universe and thus spare all of creation from watching the series.
I’m pretty dogged when watching BL works, determined to give them a fair chance; even if they seem mediocre, I will stick with it to the end, hoping that something in the final minutes will surprise me and turn my “meh!” into “wow!”
There have been only two occasions when I abandoned a BL in midstream, unable to force myself to continue with it. A Blue Sky was one of those two ill-fated productions; the other one was also a series from Cambodia, Boy Toy.
In fairness, I will say that Boy Toy was interesting and I would have liked to continue with it. Unfortunately, only the first two episodes had subtitles and, since I don’t speak Khmer, I found it too frustrating to keep watching without understanding anything that was happening.
But I am not giving up on Cambodia. I have several more BLs from there on my viewing calendar so I really hope the next one is stellar. I will let you know!
In the meantime, let’s examine A Blue Sky and figure out what went wrong. See you below the break.
Our mission statement
The Trump regime wants to erase LGBQT people from public life in the US and eliminate access to information, resources, and cultural heritage for our youth. Most LGBQT adolescents never see stories about people like themselves enjoying love and romance. In our current reality, watching a Boys’ Love or Girls’ Love series or movie might be the only means for young people to see models of how their own relationships could start, develop, and successfully grow.
It’s also an act of subversion … so watch an episode, share it with others, and resist!
About the series
A Blue Sky
| Original title |
រឿង មេឃខៀវ
|
| Country |
Cambodia |
| Release year |
2024 |
| Studio |
Sastra Film |
| Episodes |
13 + 1 special |
Principal cast
| Role |
Actor |
| Mekh (teenager) |
Van Thall |
| Khaev (teenager) |
Lee Myko |
| Mekh (adult) |
K Sinh |
| Khaev (adult) |
Khat Sombath Ketya |
When I watch BLs from countries whose BL industries are not yet well developed, I grade on a curve. If a series is produced by one of the major players in Thailand, for example, I expect it to feature very good acting, a well-crafted script, an appealing original soundtrack, and so on. I’m much less demanding for works coming from minor players, such as Cambodia; it takes time and experience to develop the skills, talent pool, and production resources to create top-tier works.
But even on a curve, A Blue Sky received a failing grade from me. To explain why, I will need to reveal major spoilers about the show. So if you want to watch the series without any knowledge of what will happen, skip this review for now!
The story
Mekh and Khaev are best friends and schoolmates in a village in rural Cambodia. As boys sometimes do, they get into their fair share of minor trouble together: wearing their hair too long, leaving the shirts of their school uniform untucked, and so on. Outside of school, their days are spent playing soccer, exploring the surrounding countryside, and swimming in nearby lakes and streams.
Mekh (top) and Khaev riding a bike together in happy times
On occasion, Mekh suddenly clutches his chest, seeming to be in great pain. He even passes out several times during their activities. When he comes to, he tells Khaev it was all a joke. When they get back to his home, he takes some pills but pretends to Khaev that they are just candies. Khaev, amazingly, believes this nonsense.
As the story progresses, we find out that Mekh is an orphan, left alone in the world, in his own words, except for Khaev, his only friend. Confusingly, his grandmother is referenced a number of times but we never see her; nevertheless, she must be supporting Mekh at least partially because he somehow has enough money to have a school uniform and other clothing, food to eat, and so on. So I don’t think he actually is alone except for Khaev.
But he feels alone and sees Khaev as the center of his world. Khaev obviously feels closely bonded to Mekh as well. At times, they are physically affectionate — hugs and holding hands — and Khaev tells Mekh how much it means to him to look up and see the clear blue sky (a combination of their names, Mekh = “sky” and Khaev = “blue” in Khmer).
We get a flashback in time with Khaev sitting before a home shrine with a photo of an older couple and vowing to them — Mekh’s late parents — that he will always be there for Mekh and protect and care for him.
That promise is put to the test. Khaev, out of the blue, informs Mekh that he will be leaving the next day to go to school in “the big city” (presumably Phnom Penh?). Facing the impending loss of the person he loves most, Mekh confesses his feelings of romantic love to Khaev. Khaev walks off without a word.
The next day, Mekh sees Khaev and his mom driving off in their car. He runs behind them as long as he can, crying and begging for Khaev to stop and speak to him. Eventually he falls behind and collapses in the dirt, crying and clutching his heart again.
I guess the full version of that promise to the dead parents was “I will always be there for Mekh, to protect and care for him, unless he icks me out by telling me he is in love with me.”
The plot thickens sickens
Mekh pines for Khaev and incessantly berates himself for driving Khaev away by confessing his feelings. All he wants in life is for Khaev to forgive him and be his friend again.
Soon enough, a matter of a couple of weeks, Khaev returns! On a motorcycle, no less, presumably bought by his mom? Mekh is overjoyed until he discovers the real reason for the prodigal not-a-boyfriend to come back: it’s to hook up with his new girlfriend, Nita, whom he chatted up via phone calls, I suppose.
Mekh (left), happy to be at Khaev’s side even though he returned only to hook up with his new girlfriend
So Khaev uses Mekh’s place as a crashpad and rendezvous point. The girlfriend comes over and the pair make ostentatious displays of their passionate romance in front of Mekh. Why treat him nicely when Khaev knows Mekh will put up with anything he does?
He even takes Mekh with him to the girlfriend’s home, then leaves him there in front of the gate to guard the place while he and Nita go out to eat. It’s at least six hours later, after midnight, when Mekh finally decides they aren’t coming back and begins the very long walk home in the dark.
But surprise! They encounter him on the road and have a good laugh at how stupidly loyal Mekh is, waiting there all that time, with nothing to eat or drink. After mocking him, they drive off again.
[Khaev pushes my buttons but Mekh the doormat annoys me also]
A different girl shows up at Mekh’s home and wants him to pretend to be her boyfriend so she can show off to other girls. She knows he’s in love with Khaev but it doesn’t matter: she just wants to use Mekh for her own purposes. He rejects her proposal.
Eventually, Mekh learns that Nita is using Khaev to make her ex-boyfriend jealous. She’s hoping to get both guys to physically fight over her. Khaev refuses to believe it and treats Mekh like crap, then Nita tells him to his face that he’s a loser and she never cared about him.
Boo hoo, poor Khaev. All Mekh can think about is how to make Khaev feel better. He even literally grovels on his knees and begs Nita to take back Khaev but she just laughs and enjoys both of their torments.
In the morning, Mekh barely brushes his lips against Khaev, who wakes and is furious. He shoves Mekh away, gets on his motor scooter, and abandons Mekh yet again. Mekh runs after him, again, pleading and clutching his heart.
[I yell at Mekh to dig up even a shred of self-esteem and let go of Khaev, make a life for himself]
We get to the WTF stage
Seven years later, Mekh’s obsession with Khaev continues, even though he has heard nary a word from him all that time. He thinks about Khaev many times every day, hoping to see him one more time before his worsening heart gives out.
Khaev, on the other hand, is living a full life. He appears to have a good job — based on his clothing, car, and condo — and is getting serious with his girlfriend (Bell, not the schoolgirl from years before).
There is trouble in paradise however. He catches Bell with her paramour, telling him that she can’t dump Khaev yet, that she needs to dupe the hopeless sap out of more cash first.
Grown up Mekh (left) and Khaev
That’s twice, that we know of, that Khaev has been used by supposed girlfriends. Maybe he should get some professional advice about relationships? Nah, easier to — once again — run to Mekh and lick his wounds. Apparently he doesn’t see the parallel that just like the women use him, he uses Mekh and discards him when he becomes inconvenient or unnecessary.
Mekh is overjoyed that Khaev returned. After all, according to Mekh’s internal dialog, he has made zero new friends in seven years so Khaev is still his only friend.
His so-called friend still treats Mekh like garbage. The next morning, he prepares to leave, distressing Mekh … but then at the last moment, says he’s kidding, he can stay for a week. Then, despite all of the times he witnessed Mekh having some kind of physical collapse when exercising much, he insists they play soccer. Right on cue, Mekh passes out.
Khaev … puts him to bed. Yes, he has a car there and could drive him to the hospital to be checked but, no, he just puts him to bed and assumes his heart condition will magically get better with rest, I guess.
[I’ve reached the point of hating this guy]
Mekh has firmly told himself to not scare Khaev away again so he must control his feelings and actions and act only like a friend. But Khaev finally decides that he should see what his feelings about Mekh really are and grabs him and kisses him on the lips. Mekh is thrilled, of course, but Khaev mocks him for being excited.
Then he totally invalidates Mekh’s feelings. He tells him that Bell betrayed him (just like before with Nita) but that (just like before with Nita) if he’s good enough, she will come back to him. He tells Mekh that he can’t possibly understand because he’s never been in love. Yeah, he dismisses Mekh’s absolute devotion to him for a decade as insignificant, presumably because it’s not “real” since it doesn’t involve a woman.
[I hate him even more now]
Now we reach peak WTF
Guess who shows up? Yup, Bell, the girlfriend. But she’s not alone … she has a fetus with her. Although Khaev had not yet slept with her, he takes his manly duties seriously and tells Mekh he will return with her to the city, marry her, and be the father to her baby, the one conceived in her treachery. Even after he heard her telling her lover that she doesn’t care about Khaev and is just using him.
Adult Khaev (left), Mekh, and the cheating girlfriend
At this point, I just shut it off. I couldn’t bear any more idiocy.
A few days later, curiosity overrode my good judgment. So I skipped ahead to the final episode (there’s also a special episode, a kind of epilogue) and fast-forwarded through it. So a big chunk, three episodes, is missing from my viewing.
Khaev had returned to the village at that point and they seemed to have a quasi-affectionate relationship … but it certainly didn’t seem to be deep or romantic. Bell, the treacherous wife, was nowhere to be found, although in the trailer it looks like she had stayed in the village with Khaev and Mekh for a while, at least. I have no idea how she and the fetus, or maybe baby by this time, were disappeared out of the plot.
Khaev is upset because Mekh’s illness has reached the terminal stage. Mekh has accepted his lot, finally more or less content because Khaev is with him again, even if not quite in the loving relationship he had once dreamed of. There are some tears and hugs and they seem to be living out these final days in relative harmony.
I lied … peak WTF was a mere molehill
And now, the special episode, where I ripped out chunks of my own hair and screamed into the uncaring void of a soulless BL cosmos.
We see Mekh waking up in a hospital bed. He calls for Khaev but only a nurse comes. She hands him a letter that she says his heart donor requested that he receive.
[O dread Cthulhu, I beseech you to devour my soul before my eyeballs leap out of their sockets and skitter across the floor in desperate search of a mousehole in which to hide]
It’s from Khaev. Yes, Khaev apparently was able to convey unconscious Mekh to a hospital and sign him up for a heart transplant. Then, miraculously, he must have been a donor match. And he convinced a surgeon and the hospital staff to murder him — a healthy young man — and remove his heart and give it to Mekh.
[Must control Fist of Death and not smash monitor into smithereens]
Mekh is devastated, of course. His hope was to die, to finally end his hopeless longing and unrequited love, and to believe that Khaev would live a long and happy life in a “normal” (that is, heterosexual) relationship. But now he will spend the rest of his life burdened by guilt, wracked with self-loathing, and bitter at every day that he lives while Khaev is dead.
The episode that shattered my mind
Even in his supposed generosity of making it possible for Mekh to live a long life, Khaev was selfish, never considering the lifelong agony and torment it would cause Mekh. He wouldn’t even be able to commit suicide because that would be insulting to Khaev’s memory and sacrifice. The motherf***er just guaranteed that Mekh will never enjoy a single moment of happiness as long he lives.
And plenty of people in the comments gushed and sobbed about how Khaev gave Mekh the ultimate gift of love and it’s such a romantic story. WTF is wrong with people?
No, he screwed Mekh over one last time — in a way no one has ever topped nor ever will — because that was easier than confronting his own feelings and acting on them. He was always a coward, doing anything to avoid unpleasant or difficult truths about himself and about his feelings toward Mekh … and this was the ultimate, final escape for him.
[F*ck him. And the horse that he rode in on]
The problems
The acting was actually pretty good, mostly (grown up Khaev was weaker than other actors). Unfortunately, the actors had little range to explore. Khaev, both iterations, was a self-centered jerk who never developed nor respected Mekh and his feelings. Mekh, as teen and adult, was eternally pathetic, blaming himself and his feelings for Khaev’s coldness and distance, both geographical and emotional, and locked into pleading with the universe to bring Khaev to offer him the merest scrap of affection.
If you’re curious and want to see a tiny slice of live action from the series, here’s the short trailer for it.
Plot holes were many. How could Khaev’s childhood friend not know about Mekh’s diagnosis when it happened? Kids would naturally talk about something like that.
Moreover, even without knowing about it, how could Khaev swallow the BS when Mekh told him his many episodes of fainting and obvious chest pain were just pranks? Khaev even saw him gulp down medicine numerous times. Nobody is that stupid.
Why make that sacred vow to Mekh’s deceased parents, repeatedly, if he never honored it for more than ten seconds? It felt like manipulative scripting to persuade us that deep down Khaev meant well. Yadda yadda, words mean nothing when his actions were invariably performative at best and pathologically uncaring at worst. He walked out of Mekh’s life at least three times, with no explanation nor concern for Mekh.
Just about every significant female part (except the nurse) was problematic. All of them portrayed girls/women who were duplicitous and only wanted to use the guys in their life. Boys’ Love does not equal “hate women”; this type of misogyny isn’t acceptable. It’s also lazy writing.
I could go on but what’s the point? This show is all frustration, no satisfaction.
I’m not the only disgruntled viewer. As teens, the boys planted a tree together and Mekh nurtured it all through the years as a symbol of their bond. One Youtube commenter summed up his feelings about the series with:
“Let Mekh find his self-worth and then burn that tree to the ground.”
Conclusion
Cambodia, I’m sure you can do better. I know it’s a big challenge to build a viable media industry in a short time so keep working at it, please.
As I mentioned, the acting was mostly fine so get these people — or other actors — some decent scripts. This was like a truly ghastly telenovela, over the top with emotionally manipulative and nonsensical scenes; although in fairness I will say that a Vietnamese BL I watched last year was at least as absurd and overwrought.
Also, look hard at your pacing. This story, told in 14 episodes total, would have been better as 8 episodes. We didn’t need to see Mekh whining about missing Khaev a zillion times or aimlessly searching the countryside for him again and again. “Cut” shouldn’t be only a directorial order; make it your script editor’s primary tool.
I really hope Sastra Film and other Cambodian producers can learn to tone down the melodrama and present more realistic movies or series — without the internalized homophobia and externalized hetero-normativity that precludes two guys from creating a loving and happy relationship together.
It’s Boys’ Love … that means love between guys, not cruelly callous disdain for the other or pathetic self-abnegation and emotional self-flagellation for the “sin” of loving the other.
My fingers are crossed that next time we get a story that feels real and healthy (conflict drives plots but it can be done without toxic tropes). Now get busy and make one like that, please.
I will be waiting to watch it!
Coming up …
Next week, Flying Pig Dog will give us another fascinating story about This Monster Wants to Eat Me, a romantic horror story centered on girls. Join us next Tuesday at Boys’ Love and Girls’ Love. Be sure to start watching I Will Knock You, which will be reviewed in two weeks. It’s a funny and very quirky series which I rated at 5 stars.
BoysLove and GirlsLove group publishes stories every Tuesday at 1 pm Eastern / 10 am Pacific. We are looking for authors to join us. Please contact Krotor if you want to write stories for our group!
Watch these videos below before upcoming stories about them so you can avoid spoilers and participate in discussions in the comments section.
When possible, we include links where you can watch the videos for free (click here to read our story all about how and where to watch Boys’ Love and Girls’ Love content).
BL series and movies in upcoming stories
| Story date |
Series or Movie |
Episodes |
Where to watch |
| Nov 11 |
A Blue Sky |
13 + a special episode (note that this will be a negative review so you might not want to spend time watching the series) |
Youtube playlist |
| Nov 25 |
I Will Knock You |
12 episodes, approximately 45 minutes each |
Viki
Bilibili
|
