CoNeTrIC

Just noticed your 'flailing Adachi' avatar. Best one yet, I think.

At the end of the show, Mando wants to be in love, but he is still somewhat wary of Barry. Barry hasn't been cured of his medical condition, so Mando's complicated feelings seem reasonable to me. I can understand your disappointment though.

Hopefully, someone else can speak to mainstream sexual politics in the Philippines. However, to me, it just seems the writers/directors are doing what makes sense for their characters.

For me, the best ending was the dream-fantasy part. The rest felt anti-climatic and intended to give the audience the expected.

Alex Diaz wasn't bad in his big, showy scene. His character [had/has?] some unexplained "condition", causing him to be selfish and create drama. OK. Say a prayer for him and our poor, sweet Mando.

Barbie Imperial and Kokoy de Santos impressed again with their realistic, multi-layered performances. Kokoy is super likable, no matter what his character does.

Time to move on. "thank u, next"

"imagine trying to have sex with someone who is (a) a virgin and (b) can read every dirty thought in your mind" -- OMG, I'm so freaked out just thinking about that. LOL!!!

Ah yes, that's right. Thank you! I forgot that's how Adachi rescued Kurosawa from the Mont Blanc disaster. Sneaky.

For a real moral dilemma, maybe Adachi should be asking himself why he isn't out there using his power to save the world. "With great virgin power, comes great responsibility."

Here's a storyline idea for season 2: With the adoring (and ever so patient) Kurosawa by his side, Adachi Kiyoshi is the unassuming and mysterious UN ambassador from Japan. Through quiet, behind-the-scenes diplomacy, our hero ends the threat of climate change, as well as a seemingly unavoidable World War III. Haha.

I agree completely with your "rant". The MDL rating for this show is unfortunate and misleading. Hopefully, with this latest episode, the series will get a lot more attention.

Seems the Filipino artistic community looked at 2gether and said, yeah great it's popular but we see the potential to do so much more. Something uniquely Pinoy.

At first, I wasn't sure what this show was trying to do, but it wasn't hard for me to recognize that it has ambition. The political angle was intriguing, and now they are totally delivering on that too. I'm glad I stuck with it.

Sorry to put you through that trouble. Thank you.

OK, thanks for this follow-up. I am indeed relieved.

So this is awkward. I could be totally paranoid, but I couldn't help but wonder whether you guys were talking about me in this thread. You, @einepriseglitzer, and I had a conversation a while ago. It was not a "fight" or even much of a disagreement as I recall. Reading your comments today, I started to feel a little shocked and thought maybe I need to set the record straight about what I actually said.

I am confident that I have not offended anyone on the asexual spectrum. I did not make generalizations about what "normal" is, nor did I say I wanted to see sex in these shows. Below are links to earlier conversations that might be relevant.

https://kisskh.at/69463-30sai-made-doteida-to-mahotsukai-ni-narerurashi#comment-4608923

https://kisskh.at/69463-30sai-made-doteida-to-mahotsukai-ni-narerurashi#comment-4614105

https://kisskh.at/69463-30sai-made-doteida-to-mahotsukai-ni-narerurashi#comment-4618897

https://kisskh.at/69463-30sai-made-doteida-to-mahotsukai-ni-narerurashi#comment-4656279

If, after refreshing your memory, you have any criticism or other feedback for me, then I'll be very interested and open. If your comments today had nothing to do with me, then that would just be a relief. Thanks guys for your consideration.

Now you're talking! As much as I love the show, I'd be so happy for Adachi to get on living without magic.

Yeah, I suppose so. I can remember only one time Adachi read someone's mind on purpose (not including the telepathy with Tsuge). Still, moral philosophers might call his silence "lying by omission." Memories of religion classes have now come flooding back to me. Thanks!

It would be super funny if Adachi started giving warning to anyone he might bump into, or asking them for permission. He'd be covering his moral bases but he'd end up in a psych ward.

Has anyone thought of one good reason Adachi should tell Kurosawa about his magic? I'm not good at keeping secrets and still I know I wouldn't say anything or even agonize about it for more than one second.

Thanks for this conversation. I appreciate your thought-provoking and positive feedback and I respect your opinion too.

I have just one more thought in response. Yes, Barry depended on his sister's love and support a great deal. (That's what made his behavior so wack.) He's distraught now because he feels he's lost her and he knows he brought this situation upon himself. (He's probably still blaming Mando too.) I don't think love, heartbreak, or empathy has much to do with the breakdown we saw. He's a covert narcissist who has now fallen into a dangerous shame spiral. It's very, very sad. Somebody call an ambulance!

Now that I understand the character better (I think), I'm giving Alex Diaz a lot more credit now for how he has portrayed the character from the beginning. Kudos to all three main actors!

As I expected, the Marcos apologists and Duterte supporters in the Youtube comments are not happy at all with episode 4. Now they say the show is too political. Fake news, they say. Ugh. Really sad that there are so many of them spouting nonsense. I worry for the Philippines. I hope this show goes viral. It has a lot to say, and people should listen.

That breakfast scene was an acting master class! Both actors taking us on a long, wide-ranging emotional journey, with almost no dialogue. Perfection! Reminded me of the final scene in Call Me By Your Name.

This show continues to surpass all expectations. It's the Trojan horse of BLs. LOL! Come for the man-on-man action; stay for the hard-hitting political history lesson.

I love its theatricality too. This has both style and substance. Kudos!

Sure. We can see how Mando and Barry handle their situation completely differently. I'll try to describe Barry's unusual behavior along with some symptoms of NPD.

- Barry shows a clear disregard for his sister's feelings and we never see much empathy from him. Who knows how long Barry would have carried on being self-centered if not for Mando's ability to understand the bigger picture.

- When it became clear to Barry that he couldn't convince Mando to continue the sexual relationship, he became hyper-focused on avoiding consequences and accountability. That's when he started pressuring Mando into silence and trying to shift all blame to him. This showed us Barry's sense of entitlement.

- Several earlier scenes showed Barry preening. This probably wasn't just for our enjoyment. They could have been intended to show Barry's excess need for admiration.

- NPD is strongly associated with suicide, which Barry has attempted multiple times, including this latest breakdown.

I'm not a psychiatrist and this is fiction so it doesn't have to be a clinical case study. But if Barry has NPD, the character and the way Diaz plays the role make a lot more sense.

I think I understand what you're saying. But when anyone says "yaoi is postmodern," I want to groan. I suspect this show is saying the opposite (and that would be a big plus of the show for me). The confrontation scene was about an accusation of homophobia, and Adachi and Kurosawa referenced homophobia in earlier episodes as well. So gender does matter in their world. Interestingly, the younger characters, Minato and Rokkaku, had no problem expressing and talking about gay identity. It's just the older generation who seem decidedly uncomfortable. (Kurosawa really is an old man, just like Minato's would-be-lover said. LOL!) The times they are a-changin'.

I'm not expecting anything, but it would cool if Kurosawa or Adachi would say something about being gay or bisexual. Maybe the writers think they did enough by Rokkaku mentioning the word 'gei' in episode 9. Was interesting to me that Tsuge, Adachi, Kurosawa all avoided using that word when discussing the subject, according to the translation at IrozukuSubs. (I don't understand Japanese, so maybe there's some linguistic reason for that.)

If that same-sex coworker is also your boyfriend, then yes, very gay. :-D