Maggi64

Yep, I also loved how in My Beautiful Man neither Hira nor Kiyoi were worried about being gay. Their bridge toward each other was huge because they were just so different from each other. One was the class star and the other was the class freak. On the outside, it was inconceivable for these two to be a couple. They could barely conceive of it themselves. Especially Hira, whose obsession blinded him to Kiyoi's signals.

I thought it's similar to Cupcake insofar as the 2 characters had a journey toward to each other that started of with them far away because one of the characters thought the relationship was inconceivable. In MBM, it was Hira. In Cupcake, it's Nozue. They each think it's inconceivable for different reasons, but watching them take the journey toward their beloved is compelling in both dramas.

That's what I meant when I said both dramas are compelling in the same way even though MBM has a dark sensibility with flawed characters, and Cupcake has a healthy sensibility with well adjusted characters. It's why we MBM fans would love both shows.

Good dramas can have any kind of sensibility and any kind of character. It all comes down to how compelling the dramatic conflict is. Critics of MBM did not get this and that's why those idiots just kept calling MBM "toxic." The missed that the show did a brilliant job of conveying dramatic conflict.

It still burns me that MDL gave MBM a 7.9 rating, but then again, who cares when the show got tons of awards in Japan. Cupcake got a higher rating here, but that's out of very few viewers and it got even less viewers on Viki. Yet I just heard that Cupcake is #1 on Rakuten in Japan. It's so funny how Western viewers ignore the shows that the Japanese (and I) love the most.

Yep, I saw Ximmich here too.

What's interesting is that its sensibility is utterly different from My Beautiful Man, which featured dark themes about obsession and deeply flawed characters.

This show features 2 perfectly well adjusted salarymen. Yet I love it just as much because the journeys the characters take is similar. In both My Beautiful Man and Cupcake, we have 2 guys who start off very far apart. In Cupcake, one thinks of himself as the boss, old, and straight. He has a HUGE mental bridge to cross before he could ever conceive of himself as the lover of someone who's younger, his subordinate, and a man to boot.

That's like Hira. Hira also had a HUGE bridge to cross before he could conceive of himself as the lover of someone as beautiful as Kyioi. Both characters had these huge bridges to cross. That's what's so cool about both shows.

Good to see you on this page! Fans of "My Beautiful Man" must have similar taste, because I also love this show. In fact, I rank "My Beautiful Man" and "Old Fashioned Cupcake" as my Top Two favorite BL's. I don't mean my fav BLs of this year, or my fav J-BLs, but my 2 fav BLs of all that I've ever seen. And trust me, I have seen every BL out there.

Yep. There's been some guy sort of spamming on this page who admitted that he has not even watched the show. He just heard it's about a 29 yr old in love with a 39 yr old, and then proceeded to make crude ageist jokes. I told people to ignore and/or block him.

LOL, the guy I told everyone to block. Good for you. I mean, the irony of him making an ageist joke about how a 39 yr old "can't get it up" when the whole show is about a man's low self esteem about aging. Ugh.

Who did you block?

Well, he's at least half right. Because, yep, he is not very funny.

I know, his comments make no sense. I'd have ignored them except that he trashed the show in some of his comments.

The beauty of the Japanese vis-a-vis being black, is that they regard you as a foreigner no differently than a white foreigner. We just ain't Asian and that's that. They are purists in so far as they don't want ANY other race in their country.

I am a professor and whenever I hear one of my students make some comment about America's lack of diversity, I tell them to watch a movie set in some Eastern country, because they will see that everyone there is the same race. I tell them to then go watch a movie set in America (or to just look around their own damn campus), because they will see Whites, Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, and Indians all walking in the same city streets. It always causes the students to rethink their flippant, fashionably anti-American comments.

Now, I am not advocating that the Japanese be less isolationist. As I've said, that's been their cultural mindset for centuries. It's just who they are, and in many ways it's the source of their culture's beauty. Likewise, America was founded on diversity -- a new country less than 300 years old comprised of immigrants from around the world. And that, of course, is the source of our culture's beauty. I just wish I didn't have to constantly remind my students that our country has this positive quality because, man, young people really do think it's cool to trash their own country these days.

BTW, Thank you for your son's service!

Rating just jumped from 8.1 to 8.2.

And it is well deserved!

I just left a comment telling everyone here to ignore him because he's a troll. He's been leaving tons of comments while admitting he never watched the show. I asked him why he's here if he never watched the show. His reply was , "Because it's fun." Huh?

IGNORE THIS TROLL

Guys, please ignore comments by "rievr." He has been leaving comments while admitting that he has not even watched the show. When he found out the show was about a 29 year old and a 39 year old, he asked if the 39 old guy's "dick still works." In another comment, he said he's gay and apologized if he said anything homophobic here. Because, you know, it's wrong to be homophobic, but ok to be ageist. Well, I for one, was disgusted by his ageism. After all, a primary theme of this show is Nozue's low self-esteem due to his aging.

He's been leaving a string of nonsensical comments down the line. In one comment he asked, "Who farted?" That's all he said. It made no sense. In another comment he copied/pasted lyrics to a song. He's the only person who said negative things about this show, yet admits that he NEVER watched it!

This person is just a troll. Please block and/or ignore him.

Why are you here if you never watched the show?

Do you mean that rievr asshole? He has been leaving comments while admitting that he has not even watched the show. He is just saying that the title "Cupcake" is stupid. When he found out Nozue is 39 he started asking if "his dick still works."

He's been leaving a string of nonsensical comments down the line. In one comment he asked, "Who farted?" That's all he said. It made no sense. In another comment he copied/pasted lyrics to a song. This person is just a troll. Ignore him.

He's the only person who said negative things and since he NEVER watched the show, he does not count. Hence, this means the MDL comments by people who watched the show are still 100%.

It's interesting what you say about their being so insular, because the Japanese have been accused of being isolationist for centuries. It's what got them into WWII. I suppose that mentality still lingers in their culture for better or worse.
I think the "better" is that it's what gives their culture its distinctive essence (ie, they have not been watered down and Westernized yet), while the worse is that they are a bit xenophobic and still refer to white people who live there as "foreigners." I know a woman who married a Japanese man and lived there for years and was always referred to as the "foreigner." But she said that was only outside the cities and that in Tokyo it was totally cool.

I am utterly lost now. I know the lyric but still have no idea why that should be homophobic.

I don't get it, how can referencing a song by the Clash be homophobic? Is one of their lyrics homophobic?

Actually, in the manga, just like in the show's episode 4, there is a part with Togawa laying on a bench drunk after the mixer and saying Nozue would have rather been with that girl. It's exactly the same. I just read the manga 4 days ago, so I recall. lol. And he also yells at Togawa about putting the keys on his desk at the office. It's also exatcly the same. I was surprised at how much this director kept things exactly the same. But you are right that when he looks at the hetero couple in the park, it's an interior thought that the reader understands, but that the director could only hint at for the viewer by having the camera show Nozue looking at a cute hetero and thinking that this would be better for Togawa. I'm not sure if viewers caught this or not. It was clear, of course, in the manga. I think the director did a good job of hinting it in the show by having Nozue stare at the hetero couple. But everything else is
surprising like the manga. As I said, I read the manga 4 days ago, and I am shocked at how this show is unfolding almost frame by frame. It's crazy! lol . I even went back and rewatched it to check.












couple playing in a park.

Yep, I agree. The phone rang, and he snapped out of it, and was suddenly so embarrassed and wanted to get the hell out of there. But Togawa. man, he was NOT gonna let that happen. Forget the manga, these 2 actors played that scene to perfection. I was so impressed by the acting in that scene. I later discovered that the guy playing Nozue is pretty famous in Japan. I've never seen either of them before but they are both doing an
amazing job.

Exactly. Nobody does dark themes like the Japanese. What's fascinating is that their culture is so imbued with propriety and politeness on one level (eg, they are always bowing, thanking, and apologizing in real life), while at the same time, they make art that is fearlessly perverse with sexually and morally outrageous characters. And, as you said, they do it with conviction. I love this dichotomy between how the Japanese act in real life and then how they create their art. They have such a cool culture.