milo:

I have been doing a lot of reading lately and it has naturally got me imagining what it would be like if certain books could be turned into live action dramas, so I was wondering: what BL books do you guys think would adapt well into live action?

This is such a good question, I was actually just re-reading this manga called Stigmata / Stigmata: Love Bites (one of my favorite manga series) and thinking about how good it would be as a BL/detective live action drama. The manga has a very stylized art style and some really striking imagery which I'd love to see recreated in a live action. My only complaint regarding the manga is that once the romance between the main characters starts taking center stage, it actually feels a bit underwhelming and not fully fleshed out, and I think that's something that a live action could easily rectify if they cast two actors who have a lot of chemistry on screen.

A manga series that technically has a live action adaptation already is The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window, but it's only a movie and I definitely think the original story would benefit from a longer format. If they had some good makeup and special effects, and could recreate just how unnerving the ghosts/spirits are in the manga, I'd watch it in a heartbeat. And if they already remade it into an anime and a live action movie, might as well make it into a live action series, as well.

As for Danmei, my favorite series that I've read so far is Guardian by Priest, which also has a live action remake from 2018 which I'm watching right now. And while I'm glad it even got one in the first place, and I do love the casting, I'd also like to see a remake of it now with a bigger budget and also without all the censorship that meant so much of the plot from the book series had to be reworked, to the point that the show almost feels like a different story completely in certain parts when compared to the books. But this is probably the lowest on my wish-list for potential remakes, just because it does technically have one already, and there's so much I do love about it despite its drawbacks.

Although there is also a movie which was filmed, and a Japanese audio drama which was announced, and neither came out so if anything, I'd love to see them actually be released.

milo:

I also think that Sasaki and Miyano could make for a cute live action show, kind of in the same vibe as Kieta Hatsukoi. I really love the Sasaki and Miyano anime (ngl I haven't read the manga yet lol) and I just feel like it would be a no-brainer for it to get a live-action some day.

I'm honestly a bit confused as to why Sasaki and Miyano doesn't have a live action yet. I never did finish the anime (and I never read the manga either) but from what I remember, it seems like a pretty obvious choice for a live action remake. And it did get pretty popular when it came out, if I remember right, so I'm not sure why no one has picked it up for a live action adaptation. But there is this upcoming Japanese BL called Popular Serizawa Acts Weird Around Me which does have some stuff in common with the plot of Sasaki and Miyano from what I've seen, so at least there's that.

milo:

Totally gonna read this now omg?? I need more detective BLs lol, this looks so good.

I love detective/murder mystery BL's, I'm always on the lookout for more :) I'm glad you think Stigmata sounds interesting, it's one of my favorites. The first volume is actually seinen so any romance between the leads is only implied. But then it got reworked into an actual BL for its next two volumes, so obviously the relationship is more explicit there.

Also, just a heads up, the story really doesn't shy away from disturbing/violent imagery. I didn't find it to be anything I couldn't handle, but everyone has different tolerance levels for these things, so I thought I'd mention it. Also, it obviously touches on some pretty sensitive/disturbing subject matters, and I'll leave them under the spoiler tags so you can check them out if you want to, or ignore them if you wanna go in completely blind: murder(obviously), suicide, child abuse, sexual assault, and in the last chapter of the first volume there is a story involving a dead infant. Most of these are from the first volume. Once it got reworked into a BL, the violence got toned down quite a bit.

milo:

Yeahh, that's my fear with literally any Danmei novel adaptation cuz 9 times out of 10 they get completely ruined by censorship 😭 One of my close irl friends' favourite book series is Mo Dao Zu Shi and she has never been able to get over the censorship in The Untamed, and I really don't blame her lol

It really sucks, I agree :/ but now that there are more Chinese BL's being co-produced with other countries like Thailand or Hong Kong and are free from censorship, I can only hope that eventually we'll get new adaptations of these danmei books, even if they've had a censored show adaptation in the past. I think what bothers me the most is not even the changes to the plot, I can overlook those, but the fact that these shows almost always have tragic endings that sometimes don't even make much sense. I think that's when I see the censorship the most, because it really feels like the story is going in one direction and then it pivots at the very end, and I think you can tell it's not at all what the creatives involved with the show wanted, but it's what they were forced to do. And all because the queer characters are not allowed to have happy endings due to the censorship laws...