Continuing our tour of Southeast Asian live-action yuri, we come to Cambodia, a country that has a much smaller population than either Thailand or Vietnam, and a per capita GDP as small relative to Vietnam’s as Vietnam’s is to Thailand’s. It’s therefore a surprise to find that Cambodia has produced a number of live-action yuri series, due primarily to the work of media entrepreneur Bun Channimol and her production company Sastra Film. Thus far Sastra Film has produced almost a dozen yuri series (some short-form, others longer), distributed through its own streaming app and on YouTube. Here I look at two series chosen at random from its output.

Is You is an adult yuri series, with six episodes plus a final “special episode” available on YouTube with English subtitles. It tells the tangled tale of TV host Neang (Ya Sophanmai), her husband, actor Kun (Sok Sunny), and fitness trainer Sour (Rachana Ravady). Neang is secretly married to Kun, who chafes at her reluctance to make their relationship public. Sour, a guest on Neang’s show, is also (unknown to Neang) Kun’s girlfriend from many years ago. Kun seizes the opportunity of Sour’s reappearance (and his apparent single status) to renew their relationship. After learning of Kun’s infidelity, Neang strikes back by beginning her own affair with Sour (as one does).

Unfortunately for yuri fans, this turn doesn’t occur until the end of episode 4. A good part of the first few episodes is taken up with Kun’s and Neang’s frustration with each other and Kun’s gloating to himself about having found a new love. After Kun is exposed and Neang and Sour begin their affair in earnest, the final episode destroys any goodwill one might have had toward the series: First Neang tests Sour’s love for her with a cruel prank that Sour should have slapped her for, and then Kun ends the episode monologuing like a B-movie villain about his desire for revenge. This implies that there may be a second season, but frankly I have zero interest in watching it.

Story — 5
Characters — 4
Production — 5 (mediocre subtitles, with some episodes on the Sastra Film app lacking them entirely)
Service — 3
Yuri — 5 (Neang and Sour get together because it’s ostensibly a yuri series and the plot demands it)
Overall — 3

After watching Is You I badly needed a palate cleanser, and fortunately Don’t Mess with Senior fit the bill nicely. Season 1 is on YouTube and the Sastra Film app, with a second season starting October 19. (There’s also a short form series, Don’t Mess with Senior: Part-Time Love, that’s set after the events of season 1 and presumably before the events of season 2.) Its premise is a classic yuri trope: first-year university student Dy (short, brown-haired) enthusiastically pursues her senpai Lin (taller with black hair), who initially resists Dy’s advances but eventually finds herself responding to them.

As we saw in Blank: The Series, there are two keys to making this trope work: the actor playing the younger pursuer must walk a fine line between being cute and being annoying, while the actor playing the pursued character must effectively portray the transition from being annoyed to being intrigued to being in love. An Mengly (nickname “Lily”), who portrays Dy, does about as well at this as Yoko did in season 1 of Blank, playing things a bit too broadly at times, while Som Monipich (“Pich”), who portrays Lin, isn’t as convincing as Faye in her character’s evolution. Nonetheless Lily and Pich as Dy and Lin play well together and make a cute couple, even when Dy’s antics get to be a bit too much.

Don’t Mess with Senior is also noteworthy for its setting: most of season 1 takes place on a university trip to rural Cambodia to study the local ecology and plant mangrove trees (which entails everyone schlepping around almost hip-deep in the water). The trip offers plenty of occasions for Dy to try to get closer to Lin, to play pranks on her fellow students (including Lin) and their professor, and to get jealous at Lin’s being friendly with the professor’s daughter.

The season ends somewhat inconclusively, with the final episode being a combination of recap episode and a Q&A session with the two leads. The latter features questions a bit bolder than those posed to other yuri leads, including asking Lily whether she and Pich are in a relationship off-screen (“No!”) and what she thinks of homosexuality (“I can’t see anything wrong [with it]. I want our society to accept them as well.”). Lily adds that people tried to discourage her from appearing in the series (her first role) based on the subject matter, but “I don’t care at all.” For her part, Pich is happy to have been cast in Don’t Mess with Senior: “I’m into that kind of series. Now I’m able to act in my kind of series.” Lily and Pich conclude by thanking their supporters and asking them to watch the upcoming season 2; I think I’ll take them up on that suggestion.

Story — 5 (you’ve no doubt seen it before, and likely more than once)
Characters — 6 (somewhat one-note, but often amusing and endearing)
Production — 6 (location shooting greatly improves the look and feel of the series)
Yuri — 6 (a reciprocal confession from Lin must await season 2)
Service — 3 (a drunken kiss)
Overall — 6

Is You is eminently skippable, but those interested in live-action yuri beyond Thailand might want to check out Don’t Mess with Senior, especially if you want a break from the typical urban settings of Asian TV series.

By Frank Hecker, Staff Writer

I like to highlight yuri series from different countries (why should Thailand get all the attention?) and from new directors and studios. In that spirit, today’s pick is She Makes My Heart Flutter, a short web series (just over an hour in total running time) from South Korea’s SOO NOT SUE Studio. It’s not exactly new, having been released almost two years ago, but I wasn’t around these parts to review it then; please allow me to rectify that omission.

She Makes My Heart Flutter wastes no time in kicking off its plot, as “optimistic” 20-year-old Seol Kang (or Gang Seol—the subtitles have inconsistent romanization as well as name order) awakens to her girlfriend breaking up with her via text message. Meanwhile her aunt, “considerate” 33-year-old One Jung, posts a “help wanted” poster for Dickinson’s Room, her café and bar, which is frequented by Seol’s friends. (The series also doesn’t waste time introducing its characters: they each get an introductory graphic with name, age, and personal traits.) As she joins her friends for drinks, Seol is surprised to learn that her aunt is the cafe’s owner, and schemes her way into getting a part-time job.

This sets up the first of the show’s two plot threads: unlike Seol, who is proudly out, One is both closeted and very reserved, and wants herself and her café to have as low a profile as possible—the café has no exterior signage and its social media account is private. As Seol brashly points out to her, this strategy is not conducive to running a successful business, and Dickinson’s Room is often empty of patrons. Well, not completely empty: Re Lee, the woman who designed the café’s interior, now comes in every evening at 8 pm sharp to have a drink and talk with One. Seol’s friends think Re is straight, but it’s impossible to miss the sparks flying between the two. The two parallel subplots briskly play themselves out, with conflict between generations on the one hand and mature reticence on the other, but all is well in the end.

She Makes My Heart Flutter is a romantic comedy that separates the two aspects: Seol and her friends provide the comedy (along with Bin Yu, the café’s manager) and One and Re supply the romance. This works quite well from both a story and character perspective. Ji-Hyun Byun as Seol Kang is the very model of an extroverted young lesbian who’s come out at a time when that’s increasingly a normal thing to do, while So-Mi Park as One Jung gives a subtle and touching performance as a mature thirty-something who still fears the disapproval of her parents and society at large.

The director of She Makes My Heart Flutter, the pseudonymous Soo Not Sue, has released two other web series on YouTube, the 15-minute short Chalna: Enough Time to Fall in Love and the 3-episode series Out of Breath. In an interview, she’s expressed her desire to make more shows reflecting the reality of lesbian life in what is still a relatively conservative and hostile South Korean society. I hope she gets that chance.

Story — 8
Characters — 8
Production — 7 (director Soo makes maximum use of limited resources and locations)
Service — 2
LGBTQ — 10 (the series reflects the lesbian scene in Seoul’s Hongdae neighborhood)
Overall — 8

She Makes My Heart Flutter is a can’t miss combination of young adult lesbian comedy and mature adult lesbian romance, both wrapped up in an easy-to-watch one-hour package. If you missed it back then, consider checking it out now.

Erica here: This year there was finally some good news for same-sex couples in Korea, as a high court ruled that discrimination by national insurance is illegal, but Korea is generally far behind on rights for queer folks.

Thailand’s next-door neighbor Vietnam is poorer and more socially conservative, and has a government more resistant to addressing its LGBTQ population’s concerns. Thus it’s understandable that Vietnamese bách hợp (“lily”) films and series are still few and far-between. One of the most recent and most interesting ones is Omai Series (no “the”) from Fimbé, filmmakers associated with Brave Films & Entertainment, a Ho Chi Minh City production house. Omai Series was originally released in the form of very short TikTok videos, in Vietnamese only. These were then combined and released as longer YouTube videos with English subtitles for international fans, and then combined again into a movie-length season 1 (with a season 2 compilation perhaps to follow in future).

Born on the internet and unconstrained by the strictures of broadcast TV, Omai Series (literally) shows its colors in the first scene: First-year university student Mai (nicknamed Omai after the Hanoi dried fruit snack) arrives at her new apartment in Ho Chi Minh City to find a strange flag on the door. “Is my roommate a foreigner?” she wonders. No, that’s the lesbian flag, and her roommate is the sultry and sophisticated Mina, a third-year student. Mina directs Omai to sit with her on the only bed (“no chairs in this room”) and teases Omai about her nickname (“Sour? Sweet? Or spicy?!”) while reassuring her, “Don’t worry, I won’t eat you.”

Indeed she doesn’t, at least not literally, but as time goes on Omai gradually finds herself succumbing to Mina’s charms. She’s cheered on by her two classmates and friends Watermelon and the gay-coded Loa Phường, and opposed by her rebellious twin sister Lili, who’s resentful of Omai’s status as the “good child.” Lili’s machinations, Omai’s relationship with her parents, and Mina’s relationship with her mother (who’s trying to match her up with a handsome doctor) drive most of the plot.

Live-action romances live and die based on the sparks that fly between the main couple, and Omai Series does not disappoint in that regard. The actor Omai is especially good at portraying both Omai and her polar opposite Lili — on my first watch I didn’t realize they were played by the same person — although she doesn’t make a truly convincing drunk. The actor Mina is a worthy foil to her. (In a promotional livestream the actors expressed a preference to be identified by their nicknames – which are the same as their character names — rather than by their full real names, and the show credits reflect that.) The acting for Omai’s best friends is broader and less professional — not surprising since Watermelon and Loa Phường are portrayed by the director/screenwriter and Brave’s PR manager respectively.

Omai Series is a relatively low budget show, but it’s a reasonably professional production with adequate English subtitles. However the vertical format sometimes forces odd choices in the cinematography, and for a good part of the show the subtitles are in small yellow text that can be difficult to read at times, especially on a smartphone. To my knowledge it’s the first yuri entry from Fimbé and Brave. I hope it won’t be the last.

Story – 7 (the addition of Lili livens the action)
Characters – 7
Production – 6
Service – 3 (a chaste first kiss leads to something more intense later)
Yuri – 10
LGBTQ — 7
Overall – 7

Omai Series is a sweet and savory Vietnamese treat, whether you snack on individual episodes during the day or make a full meal of it binge-watching in the evening.