Cherry Magic

Achi Jittawisut (New Thitipoom Techaapaikhun) is a shy, self-effacing employee at a Bangkok company who reaches his thirtieth birthday having never been in a relationship, and wakes the next morning able to hear other people's thoughts whenever his skin touches theirs. The old joke promises magic to a man still a virgin at thirty; what it does not promise is that the magic will be comfortable. The first mind Achi reads belongs to Karan Wongkarun (Tay Tawan Vihokratana), the handsome, universally admired colleague sitting beside him, and what he hears is not the ordinary small talk coming out of Karan's mouth but the fact that Karan has been secretly, hopelessly in love with him for years and has never planned to say a word about it.

The power solves nothing. It simply takes away Achi's ability to pretend he has misread the situation, and leaves him alone with the conviction that there must have been some mistake, because nobody like Karan falls for somebody like him. Karan, who has no idea what Achi can hear, keeps being straightforwardly kind, and the series takes its full twelve episodes to let that kindness land. The longer Thai running time also gives the office around them real weight: Jinta (Junior Panachai Sriariyarungruang), Achi's blunt and loyal best friend, whose unguarded thoughts reach Achi whether he wants them to or not; Rock (Sing Harit Cheewagaroon) and Min (Mark Jiruntanin Trairattanayon), colleagues working through complications of their own; Pai (Jan Ployshompoo Supasap); and, further out in the company, Dujdao (Parn Thanaporn Wagprayoon) and Tanaka (Roj Sereeroj Jayaphorn).

Directed by Nuttapong Mongkolsawas for GMMTV, the series adapts Yuu Toyota's manga Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?! directly, without remaking the 2020 Japanese drama, moving a Tokyo office to Bangkok and roughly doubling the episode length in the process. It aired weekly on GMM25 from 9 December 2023 to 2 March 2024, twelve episodes in all, and it reunited the TayNew pairing. The tone is deliberately low-conflict. The mind-reading is never played for spectacle and never used to manufacture misunderstanding; it exists so that Achi can finally hear how differently he is seen from how he sees himself, and so that Karan's sincerity has nowhere to hide. In Thailand the show was carried by GMM25 and Viu, with GMMTV's official YouTube channel also carrying it.