Things I watched in 2024-25 that aren't Thai

This won't blend into anything else in my memory. Third time through but over a year since the last I saw it, so I knew its beats and rhythms but was still delighted to revisit details which I only remembered as I saw them again.

Everyone involved did such a lovely job with keeping it light and moving whilst still giving it real substance.

Japanese (slightly older) coming of age, unhurried slice of life, low angst, and LGBT+ affirmative. It's fantastic.

Excellent drama about the dissolution of a marriage, wrapped in a story of love between women. i can't find fault with it, but it is sad and often painful.

The way he beats the shit out of his umbrella, big red flag. Oh let's make a joke out of it and laugh it off and wasn't it romantic the way she waited in the rain for him.
Marital rape. To prove that he's a man.
Yeah, it showed that he was all kinds of upset, but the caning he gave the kid. Super yikes.
And it's all so romantic he's worth dying for. %(*$£ to that and the male-gaze misogyny and homophobia it rode in on.
Acting was good. They made drama out of a man who can't control his emotions. Yippee.

Sweet, very gentle, with more of a focus on disabilities. Same sex love was very much accepted without question. Wendy the friend was a great character too.

Aside from it turning a bit of conventional crime thriller in the last episodes (perhaps its pile it on stress comes from its kdrama roots), this is excellent and quite compelling. Enough melodrama I want to see a Thai version. The framing makes for fascinating story-telling, especially in how it examines abusive relationships.

A man in his later 50s who's fallen in love many times but it never works out. He's more in love with falling in love than making it work, so it repeatedly brought up the many times I've been dumped and men's unwillingness to make it work with me. Also the emphasis on youth and beauty and how the older women didn't have happy endings, only going away to figure it out on their own.
A lot of the women were great, a few of the stories had real depth (especially the one with dementia), it's fun to learn more about Tokyo, and the series being self-aware even if Tazuko-san isn't. Reiko and Akane-chan were my favourites.