Charbonnel

If anything, it is more tense through being quietly honest. Anyone can have a shouting match, but being able to exercise restraint in spite of being so on edge is more worrying. Much like how people can be more intimidated by calmness rather than hotheadedness, as one acts with purpose while the other doesn’t think.

Rather than a bridge burning to oblivion, if it falls apart here, it will be where a gust of wind that snaps the last piece of rope holding the bridge together. Which, may also be an easier bridge to repair, as its components won’t be completely destroyed. But no one walks onto a burning bridge, while some will risk the rickety old wooden bridge.

Excuse the metaphor since I’m not entirely sure where that came from. Not usually my style. I do agree with you though, and shouting matches are a nuisance since they always follow the same formula and are not really tension generating.

The communication is very strong this season and if they continue to communicate and avoid trust issues, I will be very glad, even if they don’t stay together the whole series. Trust and communication issues that turn the relationship into the conflict is frustrating, so I much prefer that the conflict is coming from within themselves and their careers this season. As much as I’m finding it a bit slow at times, I am enjoying the reflectiveness.

What these two are going through could easily be applied to close friends, or even family members, and not just lovers, and that is what I think makes it refreshing. Their conflict isn’t specific to dating, but dating just happens to be their circumstances.

Heck, in some ways, this has potential to be an improvement on the first season.

Planning to watch this in cinemas tomorrow.

The best Japanese film I have seen in a long time. If you have the chance to see this in cinemas, I absolutely recommend!

I’ll do my best to explain here:

ちあきくんが好きだ、言いわない
(Chiaki-kun ga suki da, iiwanai)
I like Chiaki, I won’t say it

The reason the AI made a mistake is because that would have been the meaning if the sentence, although language-wise this is not that natural, because the first clause ending with だ(da) makes you expect the following clause to agree, and it doesn’t.

ちあきくんが好きだ、言わないけど
(Chiaki-kun ga suki da, iwanai kedo)
I like Chiaki, but I won’t say it.

ちあきくんが好きだけど、言わない
(Chiaki-kun ga suki dakedo, iwanai)
I like Chiaki, but I won’t say it.

And if you want a different feel to either of these, you can change 言わない (iwanai - I won’t say / I am not saying) to 言えない (ienai) which changes the meaning to (I cannot tell him). These aren’t the only options, but they’re the simplest that come to mind.

I think after all this I’ve spotted a small spelling error in my notations, but that doesn’t affect anything I’ve said, I just added an extra -i- at the beginning. I’ve gone back and corrected it now.

Those subtitles were also totally wrong, and your ears were correct. He said he liked AE, but AE took that in the “oshi” way from their previous conversation at the bar.

(“Oshi” is the Japanese equivalent of a bias in kpop, or basically being a big fan of a celebrity, often used by idol fans.)

AE then said “rather than oshi, what kind of person do you like?”.

I’m honestly 🤏 this close to both starting a discussion post that can be updated with all the major problem scenes AND making fansubs at this point. This isn’t the only decent Japanese drama suffering from catastrophic subtitles and it feels like a waste.

Sorry just a quick comment since it’s very late where I am, and I haven’t fully gone back over that section, but I do recall the subtitles being so bad and confusing I just ignored them.

The subtitles say something along the lines of “I love Chiaki, but I’ll never tell him.” This is effectively the opposite of what he said, and I’m not joking. It also misses an entire third of the sentence

Part 1: ちあきくんが好きだ (Chiaki-kun ga suki da) - I like Chiaki

Part 2: 言わないと (iwanai to) - I must tell him

Part 3: AEの事 (AE no koto) - about AE

Part 1 was fine, but the entire rest of the sentence was translated wrong or missed entirely.

Part 2 is a grammar point of negative form + と, which is saying you have to do something (by implying it will be a problem if you don’t do it) and the machine missed the most important syllable.

Part 3 just got missed due to AI being useless.

So, what AE actually said, was “I like Chiaki, I must tell him, about AE.”
Stress not fellow watchers, the subtitles are so bad they’re creating stress the script writers aren’t even giving you.

Second hand embarrassment came back and I can’t tell if it’s Chiaki’s complete and utter awkwardness alone or the fact that I’d not be much better thrown into any nightlife scenario, because that just isn’t me lol

Either way I’m still obsessed with this show, in spite of having to turn off subtitles and use my ears for some sections.

Also some WILDLY INCORRECT subtitles in the preview for episode 4, I know it’s AI / machine translation but it’s important. The subtitles literally give the opposite meaning to what is said. (See spoiler comment in replies.)

I had a look at your list and I might recommend (all are BL):

Japan:
Happy of the End - a very dark human drama. (TW: SA)
The End of the World with You - a bleak and human drama.

Thailand:
Spare Me Your Mercy - a crime-thriller romance, especially if you liked Manner of Death.
Playboy (and the gang of Cherry) - from your 18+ films watched, you might appreciate this one? (TW: SA+)

Hong Kong:
Twilight’s Kiss - this film focuses on two elderly gay men, but if you want an often untold queer story, it’s a good one!

South Korea:
Secret Relationships - an absolutely wild ride with very clever storytelling.

At no point did I make any inference of the sort. I was simply expressing my own excitement at the implication from your comment that this is a deeper drama, and if that caused offence, I apologise. When I post comments here, it is only ever about the show, and not about whose comment I am replying to.

Surely that is what makes it brilliant, no? Rather than being a BL with a plot, it is a deep drama with queer characters - which sets a standard for normalising queerness. A lot of people who would never watch BL, would probably watch a mature and deep drama where the characters happen to be queer.

I haven’t seen the entire show yet, but if indeed this is the case, I have all the more respect for this drama and its creators.

I just saw the first episode and I’m gobsmacked. In Thailand, only Be On Cloud seems to deliver on queer dramas with this level of maturity and artistry together. Looking forward to the next episode. The backdrop and colour of the world are rich and the turbulence is not trivialised. The small details in how interactions between people were more careful and determined by status and position, a fitting level of detail.

I think this is the fifth day in a row I’ve binge watched a whole Japanese drama in full…that being said, this one wasn’t particularly gripping for me. I had finally found it, and had been curious about it, but it felt somewhat underwhelming. The storytelling was a bit choppy in places and could have done with an extra episode or two to balance out the pacing, as some developments felt all too sudden.

There wasn’t that much that felt like romance, considering that’s meant to be the genre. Sure, one-sided pining stares, but that was kind of it. It went from zero to a hundred, and back to zero again.

All that said, I largely am not in the mood for dramas centred around high school students lately, so that may definitely contribute to how I feel about the drama overall, as the lack of maturity, communication, and thinking (particularly from Hayakawa) was a bit of a nuisance.

The use of one of Enaga’s lines in an ambiguous way in the trailer and episode teaser most definitely was clever. A line with no pronouns, that teetered on indicating a masochistic enjoyment of the pain that comes from his two identities and the duality of Chiaki’s interaction with them.

However, truly in context it carries a darker (more sadistic) side of him, loving but equally wanting to pierce and corrupt the gentle innocent side of Chiaki.

I love how that line was used without context in a tantalising enough way, but the rare gem here is that somehow, with full context, the line became even darker and heavier. Most shows use red herrings like this, but upon revealing their context, they become less exciting. Here, they successfully did the opposite. If you got it right without context, which is also possible, it also isn’t a let down, since it looks like that’s exactly what we’ll be getting.

It got better…well, looks like waiting for these episodes is going to be a struggle. Also, having context for *that* phrase makes this that bit more tantalisingly unhinged. I think they did really well with the use of that line. [Will spoiler tag further discussion of that line.]

Finally got to watching this, but it was a rather frustrating cliché with Hiroko’s denial. It feels behind the times? Not terrible but could definitely have been better. Then again, I guess this is still relatively early days for GL when compared to BL.

I’ll put it this way, I watched the first few episodes (the ones that were free officially), and it wasn’t actively bad, but the format is too short for the show to do any of the things I watch drama for. I like there to either be character development or a solid plot (ideally, both, although romance usually focuses on the former).

But here, with such a limited runtime, you cannot truly get below the surface level in plot or character development, and I hope that this format doesn’t become the standard for that reason. I also see that it would cater towards shorter attention spans (which could, for some just become another part of the vicious cycle, and losing depth through the rise of short form content is a whole other conversation).

No hate to this specific show, the production team, or the cast. With the same resources, I’d make fewer episodes with a longer runtime to give depth and continuity.

This wasn’t what I expected - but in a good way. Good show, the style of conflict was very 2017~2019 dorama romance throwback, but I haven’t really seen that in BL, which made it refreshing.

Only slightly odd thing to me was that Toma continued to speak formally to Natsume throughout the whole show. That’s a bit old fashioned or uptight in a way? It didn’t feel or sound unnatural though, perhaps just a more common to Tokyo thing, since they’re known to be quite different to the region I live in, and I’ve only been to Tokyo once.

I feel like this should have just been tagged onto the show as opposed to classified as a special?

I was interested how so many people mentioned how slow Taishin is, and yeah, I get it. In some ways it’s funny to be a foreigner that’s (a lot) faster than him but equally, I found it refreshing. Often most characters you’s compare Taishin to would be too fast by comparison (verbally and in thinking), and rush to conclusions through overthinking, which it feels Taishin doesn’t do, since, slow that he is, he DOES communicate properly.