Maggi64

Yep. However, I'd say that few of the K-BL's waste any time. Semantic Error, Where Your Eyes Linger, and Blueming were all under 2 hrs. They made every plot point meaningful, just as this show does. For instance, when Ji Hoon's friend took a polaroid of him in Ep 2, I knew it would come up later as something significant because 2-3 minutes were spent on that scene, and K-BL's wouldn't waste that much time unless the scene was gonna be relevant to the story. The J-BL's are also like that cuz most are short. Consider "Old Fashioned Cupcake." That was only 5 eps of 23 min each. "My Beautiful Man" was only 6 eps of 23 min each. Those shows did not waste a second.

Frankly, the only J-BL I know to waste an extraordinary amount of time was the 10 ep, "More Than Words." If you've seen it, then you know what I mean cuz you witnessed all the scenes of characters just having pointless, banal convos. Or scenes w/o any dialogue while they knocked in doors, slurped soup, smoked, flipped thru books, went jogging, etc.

Of course, the biggest culprits of wasting time are the Thai BL's. They are all 10-14 eps of 45 min each while most could be condensed to half that time.

But he carried him on his back in the episode before the kidnapper had injured his arm. That was episode 6. I went back to episode 5 to watch the stills after the credits and there were none with his arm injured. Those stills are for the end of ep 6. I feel like I am missing something here????

Thx. I need to watch that again cuz I did not notice him leaving JW's room to go back to his own room.

But the romance is not between the boy and the adult man. It's between the adult version of the boy and the other adult man. In short, both are adults when the romance occurs.

QUESTION:

Why did Jae Woo have 2 Polaroid pix of Ji Hoon in his desk when Ji Hoon's friend only gave 1 Polaroid pix to the 10 yr old version of Jae Woo?

Well put. I also decided to just stop asking questions and roll with it. I am emotionally invested in the show despite its not only failing to explain the question of money, and Ji Hoon accepting psycho behavior from Jae Woo, but also its breaking a major rule of time travel plots. That is, to avoid having your present self meet your past self, because that creates a tricky time loop.

On the rare occasion that a time travel movie does let a character meet themselves in the past, it's for the express purpose of pointing out that such a loop in time had occurred. For instance, the film "12 Monkeys" did this when Bruce Will goes back in time to stop the apocalypse and sees his 12 year old self at the same airport where the apocalyptic germ had first been spread. Once Bruce sees his 12 year old self there, he knows he cannot change the future because if he could change the future, then he would not have become the adult Bruce Willis who is there right then to stop the spread of the germ on that day. He cannot change it, but only observe the time loop.

It remains to be seen if the show will illustrate that such a time loop makes it impossible to change the future. But regardless of what happens with this particular plot point, the show is still making the attraction between the two leads believable, so I am sticking around for that.

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GOTTA SUSPEND A LOT OF DISBELIEF, BUT SOMEHOW IT STILL WORKS

It requires a huge suspension of disbelief cuz so many details beyond the time travel defy logic. Yet somehow I am still emotionally invested in it. One thing that's really working for me is how 10 yr old Jae Woo is already totally gay and has a little boy crush on a man (that heart shaped box of heart shaped chocolates and then the necklace!) It's really cute, while at the same time it explains his adult character's deep grief over the loss of that man.

QUESTION on Ep 5

Why was Ji Hoon carrying Jae Woo on his back as if he were injured or drunk, when all that had happened prior to this was that Jae Woo was crying?

Yea, they definitely could have done this in half the time. But the Thai BL's are all overly long. I guess they have money to burn on production cuz their BL industry is so booming. Most of their BL's are 14 eps. This is only 8 eps, but still should've been only 4-5 eps and it would've worked nicely.

I agree that in real life there would have been a more active step toward making sex, or at least a kiss, happen. But I think it would've only been the boy, Wang, to initiate it. In fact, Wang did try to kiss In, but was rebuffed.

This made sense to me because (1) all that icky history between In and the mom, and (2) In is twice Wang's age. I knew a number of girls when I was in my teens and 20's who made advances at middle aged men and were rebuffed -- at least by the decent men, anyway. To be clear, I am not saying relationships with a 20-something age gap can't work; I'm saying that the older man would feel a tad like a "dirty old man" and, hence, he'd be hesitant to accept the advances of the younger person at first. It would be a big hurdle for a decent, thoughtful older man to jump. In the case of these 2 characters, In and Wang, I see no reason for In not to jump that hurdle and make it happen, and hope he does.

Otherwise, yes, I agree that the screenwriter (whose background is in playwriting), really went too far with the talky scenes, that narrate too much about the past rather than giving us action in the present. But there's finally some action in the present in ep 7 when mom comes home, so stay with it.

I actually agree with every word you said, but for some reason I keep watching. It's just like "More Than Words" which also drove me nuts with its pretentiousness, but I just kept watching. As you know, I drop most Thai BL's in 15 minutes because they feel like widgets manufactured off an assembly line. But I kept watching "180 Degrees" and "More Than Words," even when they got so talky as to drive me bonkers. I think it's because both had good actors. But this one is absolutely better directed than "More Than Words."

Mostly though, I am sticking with it because I believe that the boy, Wang, is in love with the man, In, and that In is likewise attracted to Wang, albeit conflicted about it. We can feel their romantic chemistry, which is a massive plus in a BL. I did not feel that at all in "More Than Words."

People told me that "Old Fashioned Cupcake" was #1 on Viki Rakuten and that's not free either. It's a paid subscription channel here and in Japan, so I thought the same could be known about Amazon shows. At any rate, sometimes we know if a show is trending or not.

FINAL SCENE OF EP 7

Gotta give it to Wang. He didn't merely expose the elephant in the room; he skinned that thing. Then he still kept going, and served its meat to mom for dinner. He made sure denial was no longer an option for her and it was great!

QUESTION

Does anyone know what kind of ratings this show is getting in Japan?

You're not alone; I also felt virtually no romantic chemistry between the leads. In fact, there is more romantic chemistry between the leads in most of the censored Chinese BL's than in this show. Chinese BL's not only have no kissing, but won't even call the couple "boyfriends." Nevertheless, Chinese directors get around the China Ban on BL's by creating a visceral sense that the guys are in love. That's something this show failed to do even with kissing scenes.

Exactly. I had to come to MDL comments to figure out why the hell Mieko knew it was Eiji's baby when the 3 of them had slept together at the same time in order to not know who the father was. But next thing we know, she's talking about how she knows it's this one or that one's baby based on how many week's pregnant she was. I was like, wtf just happened?

Then somebody who read the manga explained that she'd continued sleeping with Eiji and that's why she knew it was his baby. But the actual show did nothing to illustrate this, and did not show us how Mieko and Eiji had gotten close and were having sex to make a baby. It simply jumped to this plot point without fleshing it out in the least.

I also thought that Makki jumped into a relationship with Eiji without the show illustrating the two of them developing romantic chemistry. They were rarely even shown alone -- Mieko was always with them. Then, suddenly, Makki says to Eiji, "Hey, sure, I'll try dating you." And -- bam! -- they were a couple. Their romance was not developed at all, and was very disappointing. At least to me.

I regret if I came off as making assumptions. But you are also making an assumption that I do not watch Japanese films. The fact is, for the past 4 years I have watched exclusively Asian film, most of them Japanese. I get my film recommendations from the Japanese Art Film magazine "Kinema Junpo." So I know the Japanese style, just as I know the French Avant Garde style, better known as French New Wave. And this show's style is actually more French than Japanese.

For instance, it was the French Director Auteurs like Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Éric Rohmer who started this thing with long scenes of nothing happening but characters sitting around smoking, or banal conversations that did not reveal character or propel plot and were there, rather, to invoke realism. But the New Wave directors used such scenes with discretion. This show, conversely, uses no discretion at all and is riddled with such scenes . It's as if the director is copying French New Wave cinema because he's impressed with it, but is a novice at the form and, hence, overdoes it. Incidentally, if you check this director's credits on the MDL page you will see that this is the very 1st thing he's ever directed (he produced 4 dramas, but never directed before).

You know, there's a joke about this in "Blueming" where Si Won is at a bar with fellow film students and pretends to love French New Wave but later admits to Da Un that he was lying and much prefers fun stuff like "Mean Girls," lol. I did my undergrad and grad degrees in English at Columbia, but Columbia has a top film school so I met tons of film students in my time there and, trust me, they are all like this and copy the French New Wave until they find their own individual style. Well, the director of this show comes off as someone who's fresh out of film school and still so besotted by the French New Wave that he's copying it.

At any rate, I really wanted to like this show and began in good faith and kept with it until, by ep 6, I grew weary of what I found to a pretentious overuse of vagueness which resulted in an underdeveloped story and characters. But if you are liking the show then, hey, that's great. I don't want to piss all over other people's enjoyment. So keep on enjoying it. Besides, this is the 1st time I've ever disagreed with you about a show, and I've agreed with all your other favs. ;)

Thank you for your polite reply. I am having a hard time seeing these characters as developed or fleshed out because the writer is presenting them making decisions without letting us know why the characters are really doing so. It just quickly jumps to the next plot point. I realize that with stories a viewer/reader must fill in certain blanks on their own, but a good drama/book helps the reader to fill in those blanks by developing a character with more fleshed out scenes or dialogue than this show has given us. At any rate, that's how I see it. But I am glad you are able to enjoy the show even if I am not :)

Yes, you are supposed to wonder why based characters being developed with context, motivation and revealed emotion. This show gives us none of these things. Instead, it just keeps dumping new plot points. Good writing does not just dump a bunch of plot points without bothering to develop any of them. In short, this show is the epitome of poor writing.

Well said.