episode 7 was so bad and the unnecessary confusion about ''liking'' him is so odd to me
In Japanese the verb "to like" also means "to love." So they use "I like you" in the same context that we use "I love you." Therefore, whenever you see a subtitle in a Japanese show that says "like'" just translate it in your head to mean "love" because that's how they use it. And then remember that just like us, they do not always mean "love" in the romantic sense.
For example, when Issei was saying, "I love that photographer" and "I love my bandmates" it was the way we sometimes say "I love ice cream" or "I love that movie star." We're saying "I love" in a non-romantic context. But we are still using the word "love." Thus, it made sense for Mamoru to be confused and wonder, wait, does he mean "love" in the casual sense, or does he mean it in the romantic sense? That's why Mamoru screamed, "Your love is not the same as my love." In short, Mamoru's "love" means romantic love, and that's why he was saying Issei's "love" was not the same. Even though, of course, it is.
Mamoru's blindness to Issey's love has grown irritating at this point. I mean, Issey showed up to his comic-con not once, but twice -- and even brought an enormous bouquet of roses the 2nd time. He tracked him down that time he disguised himself under the trash can (lol). He visited him at his family's house and told him it was because he knew he'd be there. Then he shows up at his apartment twice. When he showed up in this week's episode and Mamori still rejected him out of insecurity and blindness, I just groaned. In short, the plot is not progressing and it's grown repetitive. And now that I realize there's been no plot progression with the leads, that digression about the bandmate's brother seems even more like just plain filler.
I love when the North Korean General asks the spy he's sending to South Korea if he knows what a smart phone is, and how to use it (because most people in North Korea have never even seen a cell phone). Then he gives a bit of propaganda, saying, "These phones are how the capitalists control their people." But he's also careful to add, "Make sure you always have this smart phone on you. You can lose your gun, but not the smart phone." LOL. So despite his propaganda, even the Communist knows how vital a smart phone is to life in the free world! We'd rather lose our car keys than our smart phones! lol
Actually no, as far as I can remember Takumi Kun The Series was the 1st japanese bl series that I know that had…
Her comment is so bizarre that I think we must simply disengage with her. I mean, Japanese cinema is know for being the most sexually explicit in the world. Up there with anything coming from the West.
Actually no, as far as I can remember Takumi Kun The Series was the 1st japanese bl series that I know that had…
Not the 90's, but some nice older Japanese BL film are "No Touching at All" "Coming Out" "Seven Days" . I would suggest googling "Japanese BL" and there are lists of all of them.
Actually no, as far as I can remember Takumi Kun The Series was the 1st japanese bl series that I know that had…
Do you watch Japanese film? It's notorious for being sexually explicit. You are likely thinking of those made-for-family drama series where there might not be kissing. But in feature films the Japanese are known for extreme sexual and violent content, not to mention extremely disturbing themes. Take a course in world cinema and you'd know this. I mean, your comment is just bizarre given how the Japanese are known for the most sexually explicit films in the world.
I don't think they were surprised because it's Koichi's first boner in Mitchan's presence. It was probably due…
Actually, Cupcake is a good example of a J-BL where we only got a closed mouth, lip touch. It was a forced kiss and not at all a real kissing scene. The end is where there should have been a tender, deep, consensual kiss and they copped out on that by having the noise in the alleyway interrupt the kiss. It was a major disappointment and the only flaw in an otherwise perfect show.
Actually no, as far as I can remember Takumi Kun The Series was the 1st japanese bl series that I know that had…
Good point. The older Japanese BL's such as "The Pornographer" had full on deep kisses. It's only the more recent Japanese BL's that have been giving us either closed mouth pecks on the lips, or no kisses at all. It's strange that as BL's are getting more popular, the Japanese BL industry is getting more fearful of showing male-on-male kisses.
BRAVO!Dont tell anyone but I got physically turned on during the pre-sex scene. Ear-nibbling is irresistible to…
LOL, I noticed that too. They might have put it in to please that faction of the audience. The SJW's were all thrilled that in "My Beautiful Man" Hira asked Kiyoi permission at the end to touch him. Remember the final scene when they cleared it all up and had sex? Hira first asked, "Kiyoi can I touch you?" and there were so many comments about how wonderful it was that Hira always asked for consent. I read a translation of the novel and he asks consent a lot in it too. Although I think the author had Hira asking Kiyio's permission more because it was part of Hira's character to be submissive and tentative when it came to Kiyoi, whom he regarded as a god. But the little girls mistook this to be a PC matter of Hira asking "consent." ugh.
Yes, and his getting a boner despite being a "corpse" was the whole point of the scene. It was establishing that the corpse gets hot when he's sexually turned on. This means that he can, in fact, have a relationship with the still living boy. I think the commenter above missed the point here.
When I first read the description of this show I was not going to watch it because other BL's that took the supernatural route were either silly or, like that Korean time travel one, asked the audience to suspend too much disbelief without really delivering on either the supernatural plot or the love story. But this one asks us to suspend disbelief and then delivers both, because (1) the love story has intense heat, and (2) the bizarre occurrences in the supernatural plot are accepted by the show's characters as if they were perfectly normal.
The show works because the director has created a whole other world where the people in it casually accept a "living corpse" as real and, thus, the audience accepts it as well. The director has the actors all behave as if this is just how it is, and the actors succeed in this with a mix of deadpan humor and heart. It's a hard thing to pull off, but the creators of this show established just the right vibe to do it. I mean, damn, it took a lot of creativity to pull off such a bizarre concept, but they did it!
But what's really special is how they meld this bizarre supernatural occurrence with a genuinely touching love story. The portrayal of the 2 boys inching toward each other, bit by bit, as they fall in love is tender and touching. Their love is portrayed in a realistic way while the show simultaneously portrays unrealistic supernatural bits, and mixes both the realistic and unrealistic in a seamless fashion. Kudos to the director for making such a difficult mix work.
As for the boys' relationship, wow, that bit with Koichi getting hotter when he's sexually turned on was divine. It allows us to believe that the boys' relationship can progress despite one of them being, well, a corpse! This plot twist was at once funny and sexy. Let's face it, "Can I bite your ear?" is one of the most erotic lines we've heard in any BL. I gotta say, for a show that I was ready to dismiss based on its initial description, this has turned out to be a real winner.
im so curious about the teachers like why is that one about to kill himself i thought he was in love w the other…
Wait, where did you get that he was in love with the other teacher? Did I miss something in an earlier episode? Cuz this episode is the first time I've seen this teacher.
More Than a Love Story, It's About the Meaning of Love Itself ____________________________________________________________________
I was amazed that they made this in 1999 (ie, 25 years ago), when Korea is still so homophobic to this day. Not only that, but it was made for TV, and not a feature film. TV is always more conservative because it serves a general audience while theaters restrict the audience based on age. This makes it all the more stunning -- and impressive -- that "Sad Temptation" aired on Korean TV a quarter of a century ago.
Given all this, I did not expect to see any physical contact between the leads, and was duly pleased with the one, small kiss that they did include. But what really makes the movie special is how it conveyed the men's love without physical, sexual expressions and, instead, used dialogue, eye contact, and subtle gestures to do the trick. The subway scene, for example, was so powerful that it did not even require dialogue, let alone physical touch, to portray that these men were in love.
These two men did not need to say one word out loud because they had a silent understanding that they were going to miss their stops and ride the subway to the end of the line to go to the beach. The ability to share a silent understanding with someone is a powerful testament of true love. It requires top notch acting to convey such love without any dialogue or physical contact, and these two actors were absolutely up to the task, thereby giving us splendid performances.
Now, I must confess that the leads' age difference gave me pause in my first viewing. These guys are over 30 years apart. The young one is about 25 and the older one is about 55. To me, the age disparity would've presented a bigger conflict than being the same gender. There are cultural issues when people are from different generations as these 2 men are. Then, of course, there is the issue of physical attraction (ie, people lose sexual desirability as they age).
But when I watched the movie a 2nd time, I came to the conclusion that the older man had such depth in his character that a hot-as-hell young guy could genuinely be attracted to his character, if not his looks. Moreover, the young one says he is attracted to the older one's vulnerability, and this is believable because the actor playing the older one truly does convey vulnerability -- something only an accomplished actor can do.
Overall, it was the excellence of the actors that made this movie work. The performances were deeply effective, causing me to not only care about the characters while I watched, but to continue thinking about them long after the movie credits rolled. Which is to say, it's a movie with true emotional resonance.
One reason for that resonance is that it's not strictly about homosexual love, but about all human love. It asks the viewer to examine the essence of love itself, and confronts us with the fact that love is not some fluffy, feel good extra in life but, rather, the very sustenance of life -- without which we cannot survive. This theme is expressed with a piece of dialogue in the climactic scene where the younger lead asks his beloved, "If a person can't love someone else, then how can they live in this difficult world?"
This is the sort of dialogue that could easily come off as a glib one liner in a movie where the characters have not earned the audience's respect. The beauty of "Sad Temptation" is that by time this dialogue arrives, the audience is not only emotionally invested in the characters, but takes the characters seriously on an intellectual level as well.
1 
For example, when Issei was saying, "I love that photographer" and "I love my bandmates" it was the way we sometimes say "I love ice cream" or "I love that movie star." We're saying "I love" in a non-romantic context. But we are still using the word "love." Thus, it made sense for Mamoru to be confused and wonder, wait, does he mean "love" in the casual sense, or does he mean it in the romantic sense? That's why Mamoru screamed, "Your love is not the same as my love." In short, Mamoru's "love" means romantic love, and that's why he was saying Issei's "love" was not the same. Even though, of course, it is.
I love when the North Korean General asks the spy he's sending to South Korea if he knows what a smart phone is, and how to use it (because most people in North Korea have never even seen a cell phone). Then he gives a bit of propaganda, saying, "These phones are how the capitalists control their people." But he's also careful to add, "Make sure you always have this smart phone on you. You can lose your gun, but not the smart phone." LOL. So despite his propaganda, even the Communist knows how vital a smart phone is to life in the free world! We'd rather lose our car keys than our smart phones! lol
So thanks guys!
The show works because the director has created a whole other world where the people in it casually accept a "living corpse" as real and, thus, the audience accepts it as well. The director has the actors all behave as if this is just how it is, and the actors succeed in this with a mix of deadpan humor and heart. It's a hard thing to pull off, but the creators of this show established just the right vibe to do it. I mean, damn, it took a lot of creativity to pull off such a bizarre concept, but they did it!
But what's really special is how they meld this bizarre supernatural occurrence with a genuinely touching love story. The portrayal of the 2 boys inching toward each other, bit by bit, as they fall in love is tender and touching. Their love is portrayed in a realistic way while the show simultaneously portrays unrealistic supernatural bits, and mixes both the realistic and unrealistic in a seamless fashion. Kudos to the director for making such a difficult mix work.
As for the boys' relationship, wow, that bit with Koichi getting hotter when he's sexually turned on was divine. It allows us to believe that the boys' relationship can progress despite one of them being, well, a corpse! This plot twist was at once funny and sexy. Let's face it, "Can I bite your ear?" is one of the most erotic lines we've heard in any BL. I gotta say, for a show that I was ready to dismiss based on its initial description, this has turned out to be a real winner.
____________________________________________________________________
I was amazed that they made this in 1999 (ie, 25 years ago), when Korea is still so homophobic to this day. Not only that, but it was made for TV, and not a feature film. TV is always more conservative because it serves a general audience while theaters restrict the audience based on age. This makes it all the more stunning -- and impressive -- that "Sad Temptation" aired on Korean TV a quarter of a century ago.
Given all this, I did not expect to see any physical contact between the leads, and was duly pleased with the one, small kiss that they did include. But what really makes the movie special is how it conveyed the men's love without physical, sexual expressions and, instead, used dialogue, eye contact, and subtle gestures to do the trick. The subway scene, for example, was so powerful that it did not even require dialogue, let alone physical touch, to portray that these men were in love.
These two men did not need to say one word out loud because they had a silent understanding that they were going to miss their stops and ride the subway to the end of the line to go to the beach. The ability to share a silent understanding with someone is a powerful testament of true love. It requires top notch acting to convey such love without any dialogue or physical contact, and these two actors were absolutely up to the task, thereby giving us splendid performances.
Now, I must confess that the leads' age difference gave me pause in my first viewing. These guys are over 30 years apart. The young one is about 25 and the older one is about 55. To me, the age disparity would've presented a bigger conflict than being the same gender. There are cultural issues when people are from different generations as these 2 men are. Then, of course, there is the issue of physical attraction (ie, people lose sexual desirability as they age).
But when I watched the movie a 2nd time, I came to the conclusion that the older man had such depth in his character that a hot-as-hell young guy could genuinely be attracted to his character, if not his looks. Moreover, the young one says he is attracted to the older one's vulnerability, and this is believable because the actor playing the older one truly does convey vulnerability -- something only an accomplished actor can do.
Overall, it was the excellence of the actors that made this movie work. The performances were deeply effective, causing me to not only care about the characters while I watched, but to continue thinking about them long after the movie credits rolled. Which is to say, it's a movie with true emotional resonance.
One reason for that resonance is that it's not strictly about homosexual love, but about all human love. It asks the viewer to examine the essence of love itself, and confronts us with the fact that love is not some fluffy, feel good extra in life but, rather, the very sustenance of life -- without which we cannot survive. This theme is expressed with a piece of dialogue in the climactic scene where the younger lead asks his beloved, "If a person can't love someone else, then how can they live in this difficult world?"
This is the sort of dialogue that could easily come off as a glib one liner in a movie where the characters have not earned the audience's respect. The beauty of "Sad Temptation" is that by time this dialogue arrives, the audience is not only emotionally invested in the characters, but takes the characters seriously on an intellectual level as well.
Highly recommended.