Maggi64

LOL, A lot of people got confused because these 2 BL's have such similar titles, and both were released at the same time. I mean, "Stay By My Side" sounds so much like "Stay With Me."

I even saw someone on the page for "Stay By My Side" who asked why this show was not the adaptation of "Addicted" like it was supposed to be. We had to tell her, oops, you are on the wrong page because you are actually looking for "Stay With Me."

So you are not the only one who made this mistake!

Isn't it nuts that Gaga pays its subbers, yet they are far worse than the fan-subbers at Viki?

I just watched an LGBT Japanese movie called "Egoist," which I managed to enjoy despite the wretched fan-subs. There were crucial mistakes with simple things such as the first person "I" when it should've been the 3rd person "she."

BTW, if you haven't seen "Egoist" yet, I highly recommend it.

I can see how you'd interpret certain things as you did, since the groundwork was certainly there for viewers to interpret this movie differently. But I must disagree with your interpretation of Ryuto's mother's affect at her child's funeral being "weird."

I also was cool as a cucumber at my mother's, father's and brothers' funerals. My 58 year old sister's husband just died and she too was calm at his funeral. The direct family members at funerals have a job of dealing with guests, and I've often seen them laughing and smiling while greeting guests.

In fact, therapists have noted that wakes and funerals are terrific for providing a distraction to immediate family members in that first week directly following the death. Also, the deaths of those closest to you won't feel real until weeks later when it hits you. And then you just crumble.

I think we agree more than you realize. In fact, that's why I told Solipsism above that I simply went ahead and interpreted Kazuma as gay, whatever the screenplay might have had him say as a 15 year old kid. And I do not do this with every BL where a guy who'd heretofore said he was straight has sex with a man. In many of those cases, I simply regard the BL as bullshit and drop it. But I interpreted Kazuma as gay because of all the things you astutely noted.

Indeed, your description of him as a "late bloomer" is spot on. The reason we are able to interpret him as a "late bloomer" instead of "I'm not gay, just gay for you" is that the show did not give him a damned girlfriend or ex-girlfriend. That's another high score for this show.

I regret if I overstated my qualm about the "I'm just gay for you" trope vis-a-vis this particular show. Because you are correct that "Tokyo In April" is not particularly guilty of this trope. I only had a minor qualm with it in this show, and then used it as a starting point for a further discussion with Solipsism about this trope in BL's in general.

Moreover, I feel "Tokyo In April" is even less guilty of this trope after reading your analysis because it's clear that you speak Japanese. You knowledge of Japanese enabled you to glean things about the characters' convos that were lost to me due to poor subbing. It's a shame that all these BL's are fan subbed. Even Viki, which charges, uses fan subs. Although GagaOOlala uses paid subbers and their subs are even worse.

So thank you for translating those lines for me. And thank you for a fun, smart convo!

I just assumed they used condoms, but the director didn't feel the need to show the characters opening the condom packages. You know, the way they did in Kinn/Porsche with the guys tearing open a condom before each sex scene like some Safe Sex public service ad.

I also assumed that Ryuto continued being a personal trainer, on top of his other jobs. However, I agree that the movie should've shown him doing some personal training in that montage that portrayed him washing dishes and loading trucks. I guess the director got carried away with the idea of, "Look! Ryuto's working hard and not some gigolo living off his boyfriend!" But realistically, he would've continued with his personal training clients, so I just assumed he was doing this even without seeing scenes of it.

As for the relationship development, I also agree that it happened fast. But I was ok with this because the movie was not a love story so much as a story about coping with grief. It was more about the bereaved Kosuke developing a relationship with the mother, than developing a relationship with Ryuto.

I think that this is why the screenwriter/director took more pains to illustrate the step-by-step development of Kosuke's relationship with the mom than they did with Kosuke's relationship with Ryuto. He grew to love Ryuto's mom, and this worked for him as a way of coping with his grief.

Ultimately, this was a movie about coping with grief. On this note, it succeeded.

There was that whole scene of the boys at 15 where Ren asked Kazuma if he wants a girlfriend someday, and Kazuma said yes. Then Ren asked if Kazuma would want to have sex with her. Kazuma replied, "Yes. That would be the normal thing to do, wouldn't it?"

Ren was testing Kazuma, and I felt badly for him because it was clear that Ren already knew that he, himself, was gay. But he worried that Kazuma was not, based on this convo. I assumed that this is why Ren inched his hand towards Kazuma during that firework scene when they were 15, but then stopped. He was afraid to actually touch Kazuma's hand because his prior convo had already established that Kazuma was hetero.

To be clear, this is only a small qualm with this show. In all, I think it's a wonderful show with a positive depiction of gay male love. And at least it has one character who openly identifies as gay. Many of those Thai BL's begin with neither guy identifying as gay and, instead, they'll both have girlfriends. I prefer BL's like this, and the recent "Love Tractor" where at least one of the guys openly identifies as gay.

This does not mean I need to see the gay characters running around with Rainbow flags shouting, "I'm here, I'm queer, get used to it!" lol. They can be subtle and quiet about it. It's just the presence of girlfriends in so many BL's that irks me. Tokyo In April, thank god, did not give Kazuma an ex girlfriend. That's another reason I like this show so much.

I've done a lot of research on BL's since discovering the genre 2 years ago -- largely because I wanted to understand why I, as a hetero woman, liked it so much. I subscribe to academic journals, so I began reading academic papers that PhD's in the Depts. of Queer Studies were writing about BL's. Surprisingly, they've written tons on BL's from every Asian country! It's even the hot, new topic in the Queer Studies Depts.

I learned from them that the "only gay for you" trope does, indeed, originate with Yaoi literature. It's something that the hetero women who write it had concocted. Alas, these academic papers only discuss the origin and existence of the "only gay for you" trope. None, so far, have explained WHY this trope appeals so much to the hetero women who write, read and view BL's. So that's still the million dollar question.

All I can figure is that hetero women like the idea of only one person on the planet being so special that you'd even convert your orientation for them. Even though, of course, a real human being cannot convert their orientation for anyone, however special they may be. If so, then all those Bible Beating Gay Conversion Camps would be successful, right? Instead, research proves that they 100% fail.

But even if they were all dubbed, it would've been the same actors going back to the studio to dub their own dialogue. Jason Xu is the only one who has a totally different actor listed in the credits as doing his voice. So I wonder why???

Why was Jason Xu the only one in the cast who was voiced by a different actor? Is there something wrong with his real voice? Or does he have a different accent than the rest of the cast? What was it about only him?

I agree that this is going to be a bromance (with lots of coded BL elements). When I said that it would include more from the novel, I did not mean more of the romance from the novel. Rather, I meant that since it has more airtime than "Addicted" it can fit more plot points.

For instance, we'll probably see what really happened to Wu Bi's mother. In "Addicted," we did not get much about what happened to Gu Ha's mother, even though it's a big plot point in the novel. I think things like this will be extended in "Stay With Me" because it's a longer show.

Yes, the evolution from friends-with-benefits to a true couple was handled nicely. I think Kazuma wanted to be a couple from the start, but since f-w-b was all Ren was offering, he took whatever he could get. It was reminiscent of Kazuma as a 15 year old saying, "If sex is all you want from these strangers, then have sex with me." In other words, Kazuma is always offering himself in a fuller way than Ren is ever asking for.

It's interesting that Kazuma is always offering more when he's the ostensibly "hetero" one in this couple. In fact, my only qualm with this show is how they took pains to tell us that Kazuma is hetero. It's that old BL trope of, "I'm not really gay, just gay for you." Which I hate because, no, hetero men do not want all vaginas, with the exception of only One Penis On The Planet. When I discovered BL's a couple of years ago I was so baffled by this trope that I even researched it. This "only gay for you" does not even exist in sexology studies from institutes such as Masters and Johnson and Kinsey. It only exists in BL Fantasy Land.

So I'm going to just go ahead and interpret Kazuma as gay, whatever the screenwriters of this show say about his character, lol.

I've noticed a lot of basketball too. Since it's not even that popular in Asia, but appears so often in Asian movies/shows, I suspect filmmakers like it because it's Western and, hence, feels somehow more hip. You know, the way Americans think soccer and lacrosse are more hip than football because they're European sports. That's the only theory I've got.

BTW, I watched the new Chinese BL/Bromance "Stay With Me" and, yep, the boys are always playing basketball. Just as they are in the current BL, "Side By My Side."

Exactly! I'm so glad I'm not the only one, lol.

LOL, I know that Europeans call soccer "football." That's why I specifically said "American football." American football is way more brutal than soccer, which is why they must wear those bulky shoulder pads, leg pads and big helmets that have mouth guards. So when Kazuma said he played "football" in America, he must've meant the sport with the helmets and all the protective gear. In short, the dude's macho! lol

But doesn't this mean they have to pay the actors to show up and record the entire show's dialogue all over again? Wouldn't that be expensive of and in itself? Not to mention paying the sound engineers who do ADR (aka, Automated Dialog Replacement, which is the technical term for dubbing)???

This strikes me as odd. But perhaps the less famous Chinese actors are willing to re-record for less money than some American actor would. I really don't know much about ADR or filmmaking, so who knows.

Wow, I had no idea that dubbing would be cheaper. I assumed that an actor being recorded speaking their native language would be cheaper. And these are Chinese actors speaking Chinese. But it it's dubbed, then I'm glad I don't speak Chinese and, thus, cannot tell that the mouth movements don't match the words being spoken. That would've driven me nuts! lol.

Did it happen this way in the novel?

I did not notice it was dubbed. Of course, that's because I don't know Chinese so I cannot match the mouth movements with the true words being spoken, as I can if an English language actor or singer is being dubbed (I'm American). Do you speak Chinese? Is that how you noticed that that the mouth movements don't match the words being spoken?

MDL listed the screenwriter as Chai Ji Dan, the author of the novel "Addicted." Also, when you watch it you will recognize the similarities immediately. They've made some small changes, of course, but I'm glad for this since, after all, who wants to watch to watch the exact same thing twice? It's also 24 episodes of 30 min each, compared to 15 eps of 20 min each for "Addicted." So I suspect that lots from the novel that was not included in "Addicted" shall appear in this.

Agreed. Especially with what you say about GL's and how the audience is actual lesbians. Whereas BL's are pitched to hetero women who are interested in an experience foreign from their own real lives (ie, gay male love). Then add to that incest, which is about as foreign (ie, taboo) from our real lives as it gets.

I've also noticed that the stepbrother BL trope is something Asian, because I watch a lot of Western LGBT movies and never see this. It's interesting because Asians are so much more conservative about gay content, and yet their BL's use incest, which is super taboo in every society across the globe! I think we see it since, as you said, the women who write BL's are often out to shock with "forbidden love" plots because, hey, shock-value is what gets attention, right?