We finally got TayNew back onto our screens and I couldn't be more happy. My gosh, I completely forgot how amazing both of them look -- individually and together, and man, my my my, aren't they beautiful. Anyways, onto the Thai remake of the Japan series, "Cherry Magic", that has blessed our screens with these two. I'll say, when I first heard that this was getting a remake with Tay and New I was a bit skeptical on how this was going to go, plot-wise and acting-wise. I think I agree with others when they say this series is not an entire remake of the original. Instead, it's its own series with a lot of the plot changed, some things added, and just the overall Thai BL touch that GMMTV knows how to do well.

Let's Dive In.

The few first episodes were the best out of the entire series. The building of the characters and the setup of the overall plot was golden. I was sitting on the edge of my seat throughout it all, feeling so intrigued with Achi listening to Karan's thoughts, the connection between Achi and Jinta, the office relationship, and the overall pleasantness of the series. I'm glad they kept the iconic elevator scene and they executed it perfectly.

Now onto the rest of the series, the episodes where Achi had to leave to work in another part of Thailand, were where the episodes get a little draggy. Personally, if you take out Achi leaving and some other junk this series could've ended in 10 episodes. I hate when the last 2 episodes feel irrelevant to the actual plot, which this teetered very near that line. I got bored, and I skipped through a bunch of the filler to get to the parts that I wanted. But nevertheless, it was all still good, just blah.

Moving onto the Achi and Karan's relationship -- I think they were so stinking cute. I think the first bit of their relationship was obviously established through Achi reading all of Karan's thoughts and feelings, which led him to feel the same way. Tay and New have had years of connections and so their already close relationship helped build the chemistry between Achi and Karan perfectly. When the series was announced, the joke running around was that Tay and New took this role so they wouldn't have to kiss (lol), but they shut that down immediately with some amazing kiss scenes, and even a very mid-heat NC scene, but still it was done to show that Achi was about to lose his powers, and even I was expecting that. My only real argument about this couple is that Karan's character is not as developed as I would've liked him to be. He was a walking green flag, which isn't a problem, but his flaw was not having a flaw. You could argue that that's an actual flaw itself, but it's never pointed out in the series that he's too nice, too forgiving, too perfect. He was such a one-dimensional character, there to be sweet and his whole personality was to make Achi's life better. I would've loved some more character depth from him. For Achi, it was more that he wasn't taking accountability for a lot of what they had going on in terms of their relationship and let Karan always take the blame. Besides like one time he apologized, Karan was there to forgive first. I also kind of hate that Karan didn't feel some type of betrayal when finding out Achi was intruding into his thoughts, even if he wasn't trying to. I would've liked a conversation behind Karan wondering if Achi really liked him or was only doing so because he could hear his thoughts. But besides some of those small points, they were really cute, and TayNew did a good job.

Moving onto Jinta and Min -- the most disappointing part of this entire series. Junior (Jinta) was by far my favorite actor/character. He took this quirky role and made it work perfectly in this remake. His conversations with Achi, his reactions to MIn, his way of analyzing and thinking and reacting -- all of it was legit perfect. It was also so nice to see Mark (min) again since Sky in Your Heart. He did an incredible job in this -- showing how versatile his acting is compared to his character in SIYH. Their setup was nearly perfect, and their continued build-up was so good that I was rooting for them more than I was for Achi and Karan at one point. Then Jinta confesses, and it's magical. After that, they have a couple of cute moments, but my problem is that Jinta never loses his powers, which isn't entirely terrible, but the premise of this series is that their virgins with superpowers that no longer will have them by the end. It's upsetting, but I guess it's an oh-well situation. I would've still loved to see them connect and watch how their first time would've gone down which is why the end result of this couple is such a letdown, but nevertheless, I really liked them.

Another addition to this series was Rock and Pai who I actually really liked. I liked that Pai was assertive and more of the leader in their relationship while Rock was bubbly and just happy to be around her. Loved the way Rock treated her and flirted with her. Again, happy they became a couple, but a kiss would've been nice too.

Now, onto some nit-picky things: I wish they would've had the moments when Achi was touching someone for it to be slow-down because their touching for a long period of time when Achi read their minds felt so awkward. While I liked the Rock and Pai addition to this series, they still felt irrelevant to the entire series and didn't really help drive along the original plot. They were obviously added so this series could run for an entire 12 episodes, but that time could've been used for Jinta and Min to build more, or even Achi and Karan.

Ratings:

Story: 8.5/10 - Really nice. Felt like its own series and did not follow the same format entirely as the Japanese one. some stuff felt draggy, but overall, this was really nice.

Acting: 9/10 - Great! Junior was the best in terms of taking his character to the next level. TayNew were a close second. Everyone else did well too.

Music: 6/10: I didn't pay much attention to it at all.

Recommendation Value: 8/10: This was really nice! I would recommend it to anyone wanting to see TayNew again on their screens, and if they enjoyed the Japanese one. I feel like I liked the Japanese one still a lot more, but this was good too!