University student U-yun Song confesses to graduate teaching assistant Jin-hyeong Woo and begins dating him. The two move into a one-room apartment together, where U-yun discovers that the seemingly aloof Jin-hyeong is actually an eccentric BL fan who often acts out romance tropes.
One-Room TA is a Korean-animated series based on the webtoon by Jibung. The series is streaming on the OceanVeil channel on Thursdays.
How was the first episode?
Bursting onto the Preview Guide scene a month or so late, One-Room TA puts forth a steamy piece of Korean BL animation, leading with an extremely energetic opening animation before giving way to…a lot of nothing. Okay, that's not entirely fair; this is a ten-minute production, with multiple minutes given over to credits, so I'm not expecting an earth-shattering narrative here. But it still takes me aback just how languid this show's pacing is at the outset. The viewers get introduced to U-yun, who is A Guy, and watch his build-up to asking Jin-hyeong out after the latter pings his gaydar. I can't think of any other way to describe this stretch other than seeing a slow-burn romance story paced out over a couple of minutes.
Fine, it's an OceanVeil short; it's gotta be quick so the boys can get down to business, but after the confession, the surprise actual premise is that…it turns out the quiet, awkward Jin-hyeong is actually a bit of a goofy goober in the comfort of his own home after he and U-yun move in together. Not like sitcom wacky-neighbor antics, but more like mild attempts at being a silly brat. Some of us would call that the dream, you know.
Regardless, One-Room TA is still pretty casually paced even after the main couple hooks up, and enterprising viewers don't even get to see them hook up! Instead, the time is spent on watching them have mildly inappropriate Seinfeldian conversations on subjects such as boning on the subway, presumably in between their own boning down. But again, that's not there because I guess the budget thus far was blown on that snazzy opening sequence. So it's a lot of talking heads with stiffly translated dialogue against the backdrop of the titular room, with spaces sort of shifting depending on where these boys need to be sitting.
The result is a whole lot of nothing, unless you're really into this particular pairing, which has been pointedly put together with little build-up. Maybe things will get steamier as this goes on, or maybe this really is just meant as a cozy, ten-minute escape into idealized roommate romance. I at least got a chuckle out of the fact that the characters attend a school apparently called BIOLOGY UNIVERSITY, and there's a cool-looking butch woman who shows up for 0.7 seconds. Hopefully other elements bring this up later, but for now I think there's more amusement to be had just by watching the OP on loop for the runtime.
You know how sometimes you like the idea of something more than the actual end product or experience? That's how I feel about the One-Room TA short-form anime that just premiered on OceanVeil ! I appreciate that this show, a boys-love Korean webtoon adaptation that makes an effort to characterize its leads rather than immediately fetishize them, as I think more globally sourced expressions and explorations of queerness are inherently good. However, both the content and execution of this episode leave a lot to be desired, and I ultimately found this premiere more frustrating than fun.
U-yun returns to his undergraduate program as a sophomore after taking a leave for what's implied to be his mandatory military service, and immediately falls for his aloof TA, Jin-hyeong. After a quick confession and the two moving in together, though, he finds out that, like many introverts, Jin-hyeong's cool demeanor in public is just a defense mechanism and that he's actually a silly, high-energy little gremlin in spaces he feels comfortable in! That makes the first half of this episode a setup for a queer odd-couple story, with the back half focusing on the pair's deliberation over the theoretical and practical implications of public intimacy.
I should be really into a show with this premise, but I found it too frustrating to be enjoyable. The subtitling is bad and clunky in a way that could have been alleviated if a native English speaker had read through the subtitles before the episode was published. In one scene, Jin-hyeong answers the question, “How was your weekend?” with the response “Nothing much, I just stayed home,” which isn't an appropriate way to answer that question. U-yun also describes his apartment as having a “well-lighted bedroom” which is just grammatically incorrect.
The pacing is also really slow despite the episode being only ten minutes long, with the payoff to the public intimacy set up early being only the two overhearing another handsy couple getting yelled at while riding the train together in a post-credits scene. One-Room TA also has such a straightforward premise that it doesn't really need to explain its characters and their circumstances to this degree, which makes most of this first episode feel entirely unnecessary. Still, though, I hope this premiere is more of a false start than it is an indication of things to come, as I would really like to live in a world where gay, slightly spicy, cozy romcoms are just as commonplace as their heteronormative counterparts.