The Spirealm 致命遊戲 is a 78-short-episode (about 20 minutes per episode) Chinese series that premiered online unannounced at 6pm on February 2, 2024 with all 78 episodes dropped all at once in China. However it was very short-lived and was taken offline within 2 hours!
Adapted from the BL novel Kaleidoscope of Death 死亡萬花筒 by Xi Zi Xu 西子緒, the drama series was originally titled 靈境 and it wrapped filming around March 3, 2023 after 120 days of filming according to reports. Therefore they would have started filming the series from early November 2022.
Eventhough no longer BL and the core story of surrealism in the novel has been changed into VR game plotlines, and knowing the banning of BL related drama series in China since 2021, it is surprising they even considered filming this series in 2022! Apparently there were talks about a relaxing of policy on the banning of drama series with double-male leads at the end of 2022. Whether that was just rumours or fact, we can’t be sure. However in early 2023, two Chinese dramas adapted from BL novels were indeed sneakily released online because they were not allowed to promote them beforehand… Although one series, A League of Nobleman 君子盟, was aired successfully in its entirety, the other, Justice in the Dark 光•淵, was taken down prematurely with just 8 episodes aired. I have written about those two dramas last year.
I don’t know how many episodes The Spirealm was supposed to have originally but with what happened to Justice in the Dark, reports online suggested that they chopped down the series into shorter episodes so the series can be considered as short-episode series 微短劇, as apparently censorship of short-episode series is more relaxed than normal series. So it looked like it passed censorship and was able to be aired but for a very short time only, since it was taken down within a couple of hours after going online! Them stupid bureaucracy, changing their minds like a yoyo, LOL…
But fear not, fans were quick off the mark (not surprising since these on again off again things happened too often in China and fans are used to series disappearing without any warnings) and downloaded the series. The question is whether they managed to download all 78 episodes in the short time the series was online? That said, there are now some illegal episodes available online outside China… I found one on YouTube that has 34 episodes yesterday morning but that has now been blocked by the rights holder, LOL… I wonder if the official Chinese streaming platform can make it available on their international branch of their streaming platform in the future since they are able to stream a lot of the Thai and Korean BL dramas on their international branch?
Anyway let’s just forget about all these shenanigans in Chinese BL-less dramas, we have two real BL drama series from Taiwan adapted from Chinese BL novels coming this first quarter of 2024 to look forward to. One will premiere on February 24, 2024 which is adapted from the novel Dage (eldest brother) 大哥 by Priest titled Unknown 關於未知的我們. The other series adapted from the novel A Certain Someone 某某 by Mu Su Li 木蘇里 will air soon although no date has been announced. Apart from these two Taiwanese series, Thailand is also adapting another Chinese BL novel Professional Body Double 職業替身 by Shui Qiang Cheng 水千丞, which is one of the 188 BL novels, to be titled My Stand-In which maybe out sometime later this year…
Update February 6, 2023: This is interesting, Xia Zhiguang has uploaded the opening sequence onto his YouTube channel…
Corner Café 
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