Maggi64

You need to copy/paste what you'd written above and leave it as a review on River's Edge MDL page. There only 6 reviews for that movie at present, and the rating is a shockingly low 6.9. I am continually amazed at the poor taste of people on MDL. Movies like this that are internationally critically acclaimed commonly receive ratings below 7.

Also, I was amused by how you referred to the 90's as this long distant era because that was my era. Of course, you are correct that it was a long time ago -- 30 years! Nevertheless, to someone like myself who was the same age as those characters in the 90's, it felt like yesterday. Indeed, I did not even notice the absence of cell phones and laptops when I'd watched it. It was not until a reviewer referenced it that I realized, "Oh yea, they used landlines and payphones in this movie." You see, I did not notice this because landlines and payphones seem utterly normal to me because I had used them my entire young life.

Incidentally, I know you are in your 30's since you told me in a PM. But may I ask where you are from? If you don't want to say in a public forum, you can PM me again. People from all over the world are on MDL, so I am always curious to know where the person with whom I'm chatting is from.

Lastly, since we are both fans of Uesugi Shuhei, can you recommend other things of his for me to watch? I have now seen him in 3 things: River's Edge, One Room Angel and a drama whose name I can't recall. He played an aspiring rock star who, at 27, realized it was never going to happen and had to adjust his life expectations and find ordinary happiness running his family's Udon Shop. If you can recommend anything else of his, let me know.

Listen, you truly ARE a good writer. It's not only wonderfully descriptive writing, but also very energetic, and keeps the reader moving along. You also have your own unique style that I'm even beginning to recognize after reading a couple of your posts, your comments, your review and your private message to me the other day. You told me that you are a graphic designer and it totally makes sense to me that you are in the arts because you have a creative flair. I have not see how your creativity manifests in your field of the visual arts, but my field is the literary arts and I can say with certainty that you are very creative in this realm.

As for the show itself, yes, I am loving it. It's not getting much attention, which we can see by how few comments there are and the low rating. But I think that is because people were expecting it to be fluffy in a way recognizable to them from other BL's (which is the exact thing I avoid, and why I had low expectations going in), and then it turned out to have an unrecognizable tonal mix of fluffiness, darkness, dry wit and quirkiness. Those are hard qualities to pull off all at once in one show because they are, in fact, qualities that are often at odds with each other. The fact that the writer, director and actors can pull of such a tonal mix is really unique. So I am loving it for the precise reason that I suspect many others are not.

Oh, and I also have a thing for the actor playing Koki! lol. He's not attractive in that pretty, boyish, idol way that most BL actors are. He's got an unusual, angular face and a prominent nose, which may not appeal to most of the young BL fans. But I love odd, unusual faces like his. He's also an amazing actor. You MUST see him in the movie "River's Edge." It's currently on Netflix, but also free on Kissasian. It's not a BL, but a critically acclaimed LGBT film.

I read this review and thought, "Wow, this person truly has a talent for precise, descriptive language in her writing." So I looked at the account and -- lo and behold! -- it's the same person with whom I'd just shared an engaging convo about "I Can't Reach You" two days ago. What a happy coincidence!

Oh, and I agree entirely with your take on this show. I have not read the manga as you have, but I loved eps 1 and 2 and left my own review below.

Thanks for reading my review and for your engaging reply. As for him being a nihilist, I deduced that based on his simply not believing in anything. A person needs to believe in one of three things: themselves, other people, or god. You can believe in all three, or even just one. But you must believe in at least something to have inner meaning, right?

Well, Koki sure doesn't believe in himself and has zero self esteem. He doesn't believe in others as a source of happiness either, as he has no lover, no friends and no loving connection to his family (ie, his mother was a nightmare during her phone call). As for god, he had said in ep one that he does not care about things like god, Buddha or Allah. That leaves nothing to care about. Based on all that, I pegged the poor guy as a nihilist who thinks he's living a meaningless life in a meaningless, godless world.

But what makes him an interesting character is that instead of being an utterly empty shell, we can sense there's still something deep, down in there that used to love other people, but which got lost somewhere along the way. I think the show is going to delve into his past to show us how he lost his faith in life. We already know it has something to do with his brother, and with he and his brother having some involvement with the Yakuza. The director has done a nice job creating mystery there, and the viewer is already eager to know what happened in the past because it's clear he was not always so empty.

We know he was not always so empty based on how feelings emerge whenever the angel compliments him. I loved how you analyzed the way the angel's telepathic connection to Koki's soul makes him not only able to see Koki's qualities such as kindness, but to know that Koki himself used to like these qualities in himself as well (he said in ep 2 that the angel, "Tells me what I want to hear about myself." Or, as you put it so well, when he told Koki he was kind, "it broke through to Koki, as though piercing through that inner voice of his that interprets others’ words and thoughts from the most cynical/nihilist lens to avoid feeling hurt."

I'm sensing that the show's ultimate message is going to be about the importance of self-love. And I think it's really cool how a show that's ostensibly so fluffy (I mean, an angel!), and that has such dry humor, can also have philosophical insights about loving oneself. In all, I am digging this show precisely because there's such a unique mix.

I have seen internationally critically acclaimed films get ratings below 7 on this site. So I simply ignore the ratings here and judge for myself.

Gotta love a BL that gives us a fluffy plot with an angel, while also giving us a convo where the angel says he knows Koki is masturbating every night. Koki replies that he used to do it with "delivery" prostitutes, and then announces he's "going to take a dump." When the angel balks at the crudeness of that announcement, Koki says, "You talk about pubic hair, don't you?"

Masturbation. Prostitutes. Taking a dump. Pubic hairs. Never thought a fluffy show about an angel would give us a convo like that! And it's so damn off-the-wall and funny that I'm loving it.

Forget when emoting, Koki is ridiculously handsome when merely existing, lol. I love how his face is so angular and unusual, with that long, prominent nose.

Thank you!

And like you, I loved Lee Sun Kyun in "My Mister." That show had such wonderful messages about how to live like a decent, fully evolved human being, and the character he played was all about accepting human flaws and forgiving people. It's ironic that there were so many Korean fans of that show, yet now we see leagues of Koreans trying to tear down the real man who played the character instead of forgiving him for smoking a little pot.

I gotta say, there's something scary about how the Koreans tear down their celebs after scandals. I read in the Guardian that over 30 Korean idols have killed themselves in the past decade alone.

That's because acceptance had only just become more common in the early 90's, so it was still a new kind of mindset. However, the movies made back then were still stuck in the mindset of the prior era (ie, the early 80's), and kept portraying only homophobia instead of the rising acceptance of gay people. You probably saw those kinds of movies and, thus, assumed it was a terrible era for LGBT people (eg, movies like 1993's "Philadelphia" where Tom Hanks was fired from his law firm for having AIDS).

You see, AIDS was ravaging the gay community in the early 80's and sparking homophobia in those fearful of catching it. But then, in 1995, a new class of antiretroviral drugs called protease inhibitors became available, and this meant that people with AIDS no longer died from it. Not many talk about this, but the fact that AIDS was no longer rampant had a lot to do with heteros chilling out about gay people from the 90's onward.

Yay! Finally, another 50-something BL fan! The average BL fan is 15-30 yrs old and female, with the majority at the younger end of the scale (ie, teenagers, such as the girl right here on the thread with us, HereToHaveFun). There are so few of us middle aged fans that we must stick together, lol.

I think your response to this show is precisely what the screenwriter/director wanted the viewer to have. He wanted us to identify with the characters' fear of failure. It was about how having big dreams also means having the commensurate big disappointments when they don't come true. So the fact that the show made you identify enough to have a fear of future failure yourself is a sign that the director succeeded in his goal with this show.

I also thought that Ryo looked different in this than he did in "Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese." But how do you know he had lip surgery? I googled him to see if there was anything about him having lip surgery and could not find anything. But his lips truly do look different in this show, so I think you're right. I'm just curious as to where you heard it,

LOL, I love that I'm seeing you on this page. I just tapped in tonight after not seeing this movie for 2 years cuz I saw that our boy from "One Room Angel" has a support role in it.

In fact, 3 actors in this movie did BL's. The "crazy little dude" as you called him is Suga Kenta, who played the young version of the Yakuza Matsua in "Double Mints." You had also called him "The Joker" when you and I watched "Zebra" together 2 years ago. The guy who played the teacher in Minato's Laundry is also in this (aka, one of the 2 Undertaker Brothers from that show, lol). He played the one whose wife is in the coma.

I cannot recall the character whom the guy from "One Room Angel" played cuz I had no idea who he was back then. Nor do I want to watch this whole movie again to find out. As you said, it started off well enough, but then went utterly haywire.

Yep, the director did go a bit overboard with the close up of her demonic expression while stabbing the knitting needles. But it was precisely this decision of the director (among other scenes of this psycho girl), that told the viewer he wanted us to know she was the psycho who killed the kittens.

So while, no, I did not read the director's notes, I did read the director's choices of how to shoot this character and how this, in turn, revealed both her motives and the subsequent results of her motives. I suppose you could say that was a proxy for "reading the director's notes," as you'd joked. :)

At any rate, I just read your private message to me about this movie, and appreciate your taking the time to explain how/why/what you feel about this movie. It's absolutely on my list to re-watch .

I'm glad to hear that a teen saw the question of consent the same as me. I'd begun to worry that the entire current generation was crying for standards of consent that were vastly different than my own generation's. But, hey, I guess we're not so different after all.

As for me being 55, I went to college in the late 80's and early 90's and LGBT rights were already firmly in place back then. I went to Columbia in NYC where it was very easy to be gay and out of the closet. In fact, it was easy to be out of the closet in every college in America at that point, and all had LGBT clubs. We even already had the Gay Pride Parade and the Gay Halloween Parade in NYC. I lived in NYC and loved watching those parades every summer! You'd see the most entertaining things, such as "Dykes on Bikes," as well as gay NYC cops and firemen marching in uniform.

I can assure you that our culture was already accepting gays in the early 90's, especially in urban areas, and in the entertainment industry. For instance, gay celebrities had just begun to come out of the closet -- eg, Boy George, Elton John, George Michaels, and Ellen DeGeneras. Alas, it was still hard to be gay in the political realm. For example, NJ's Governor McGreevey had to resign from office when it was discovered he was cheating on his wife with a male lover. It was also still hard for LGBT people who lived in the Bible Belt and the rural Mid-West. Basically, gay teens from those places had to migrate to urban areas to find acceptance.

So, ok, it still wasn't 100% easy to be out of the closet yet, but it wasn't as bad as you think it was. Of course, it did take another 20 years to finally get the Gay Marriage Act passed. So it was a long battle. But dang, at 55, I am not so ancient that there were no Gay Rights at all in my era! lol

Yes, I should've warned you it was long, lol. But as one person said, we managed to keep it respectful. So many arguments here get ugly. Especially arguments about a topic as touchy as Sexual Consent!

BTW, since you read it, you know that I thought we saw things so differently based on our generations. But I may have overstated this cuz you see consent the same as I do, and you might be a 20-something like that girl who disagreed with me. May I ask how old you are?

Yep, I saw it the same way.

LOL, scroll down and you'll see an entire argument between me and Ryn_333 cuz I was like you and thought Yamato stopped instantly when Kakeru said "Stop" while the other person thought it was a sexual attack without consent . Funny how people's standards for consent differ.

You really must. It was a critically acclaimed movie, not just in Japan but with the Western press too. That's why Netflix picked it up for international distribution.

As I said, it's LGBT, so not at all a BL. Indeed, it has a rather perverse premise and gets very dark. The set-up is that a closeted gay teen is bullied by homophobes at school (primarily by the actor playing Koki in "One Room Angel"), and he finds peace in going to this river bed where he'd once discovered a corpse. He shows the corpse to his female BFF, and tells her that it's his "special thing." The plot takes off from there. And man, it's a weird, wild, dramatically compelling ride.

Terrific story, acting and directing. In all, it's a must-see. Especially for someone like you, who's older than most BL fans and, hence, can handle a sophisticated LGBT film that is utterly devoid of anything even remotely called "fluff."

I freaking love him too. His face is so angular and unusual. Not the soft, pretty boy look we customarily get in BL's. Oh, and if you're into this actor, then you must watch "River's Edge," from 2018. I mentioned this in my review/comment above. It's one of my Top 10 fave Japanese movies.

He's not the lead in "River's Edge," but his supporting role is pretty big. It is an LGBT film and he plays a slimy, homophobic fuck. But the fact that he makes the viewer hate him so much in this movie proves what a great actor he is.

"River's Edge" is currently on Netflix. But you can find it free on KissAsian too.