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Unfortunately that's the reason(s) the overwhelming majority watches something for. Production, aesthetics, looks. I don't want to step on any toes, but that's also why all the best rated dramas on MDL are Korean, because they care the most about these three things and the drama gets a high rating even though some of them are mediocre at best if you only count the story. I'm not a big fan of TSOU and even less of The Loyal Pin, which was more like an over the clothes softporn for me, but they're the GLs with the biggest budget and most appealing visuals, so they get the best rating.

You definitely got a point. But there are less or at least the same amount of different honorifics in the (modern) German language than in English. And they have the same meaning, so I think there _shouldn't_ be a problem with that, but I guess people make it more problematic than necessary, be it translators or "audience".
How you address someone in Asia is much more important because it is way more about respect and manners than simply to show that you don't know someone (like it is in German or, at least as far as I know, in English), so I think there shouldn't be any compromises. There could be an easy solution to all of that, just include the cultural aspects in the subtitles and show the meaning of it in brackets or at the top of the screen as an explanation the first time they come up in an episode (like some fansubbers do). But then they'd need to assume people aren't actually idiots and have an attention span of more than 5 seconds to understand and remember what everything means 😉.

I also made a mistake in my comment. I should've written/wanted to say "[...] they'll start spending a little more money on translation [...]" instead of translators. I meant research of language and culture and respecting it, not firing or hiring translators. Sorry for causing a misunderstanding.

I never took what Netflix does as standardizing, more as "taking their customers for idiots". I find completely ignoring and dumbing down Asian culture (be it Japanese, Korean, Thai or Chinese), in their subs pretty offensive to be honest. And then converting every metric measurement into feet and pounds makes me really think if they don't want 95% of the worlds population as their customers.
A lot of Japanese people and studios are already complaining to the big streaming services about their subs, so maybe (probably not) they'll start spending a little more money on translators that can respect Asian language and it's cultural meaning.

I don't know Pink Love, but Dream is basically the worst I've seen so far in that regard. Just because her mother, who doesn't force her to do anything, says, more off-handedly than anything, "it would be cool if you'd marry that guy" she is 100% instantly onboard and completely disregards her own feelings because of it. But that show is a complete mess anyways and I wouldn't recommend it even to GL addicts. GAP is probably a close second, but I at least like the humor and Sam's character until ep9 or so.

I think the problem isn't that it involves men, the problem is that somehow at least one of the characters is always forced to, or for whatever reason needs to, involve a man so he has the chance to get between them. Or she's simply too stupid and/or naive to see what a million viewers see after 2 minutes, that he's some insensitive dude with no charisma whatsoever, gets deeply influenced by him and has second thoughts about her feelings. If they'd just turn on their brain and tell them to f*** off or ignore them or whatever (like in Apple for example), I wouldn't have a problem if a dude is involved, even if he's toxic.

Absolutely agree with your post, TSOU did a good job with those scenes by showing romantic moments with some skinship, but not overdoing it and ruining the mood with unnecessary stuff they aren't allowed to really show anyways. Unfortunately in some of the latest GLs instead of skipping the sex scenes (like TSOU did) they show half-assed, completely clothed sex without any skinship except for stroking arms and faces (Apple, TLP for example) or even doing anime censoring by placing an object in front of the camera when someone's even only in their underwear. It completely ruins the mood and immersion if you ask me. If you're not allowed to show something, don't show it instead of trying to do fan service that looks completely unnatural and unrealistic.

But I really don't agree with is the second half of your last paragraph. While I agree that nude scenes just for the sake of someone being naked are stupid and unnecessary I think actresses (and actors) shouldn't try to uphold their image but act the character in the script, regardless if they have nude scenes or not. If it's a "slutty character", they should play a slutty character, don't try to make it pure and naive just because that's the public image of the actress. If the actress is not capable of that or not allowed to or doesn't want to, then it's a miscast if you ask me and she shouldn't try to play such a character in the first place. That's the main reason why I almost completely stopped watching Japanese dramas with Idols cast as a character that have a lot of screen time. It's also the reason why I'm of the unpopular opinion that Ayaka-chan wa Hiroko-senpai ni Koishiteru is a complete disaster and the worst GL in existence when it comes to the romantic aspect of the story. It's funny and cute, but as soon as something romantic happens Kato Shiho (Ayaka) completely fails to do her job as an actress and seems to just freeze. Probably because she's not allowed to kiss someone in a romantic context or show that she knows how to kiss (just my exaggerated assumption). She, and Idols in general, are more focused on trying to uphold their pure and cute facade than actually act a character.

Interesting premise with the strict senior, but somehow they completely abandoned it a few minutes into the first episode. Everyone's afraid of her and says "she's super intimidating", reality is she's the least intimidating senior in the whole university. The screenwriters also seem to like throwing darts at plot devices, otherwise I can't explain how they came up with the idea to stuff about 17 different clichés of what can go wrong in a relationship into one drama. Good thing about it: I think their chemistry was pretty natural, at least if they weren't excessively stubborn or got some kind of shit thrown at them they couldn't dodge anymore because it became too much. Also, Pure is the worst character I've seen in a while, even worse than Chao Planoy's villain dudes she always needs to put into her stories. And he even gets comforted by his sister and friend? I would've cheered if Gyo just punched him right in the face in the last episode and I usually don't condone violence one bit.

So, maybe a question for the people who read the novel: why does Wa remember the time reversal this time if the dad did it a few times before and she never remembered anything? It's basically the only thing I found puzzling about the drama.

The other thing that didn't really make sense for me was why the post-credit scene was a post-credit scene. It doesn't seem to have a major impact on their future because it didn't really have any before the time reversal. Was the conflict between them a way bigger deal in the novel? Because as it was in the drama I really didn't care that Kie apologized and their feud ended, it was just part of the background story why Four was seen as a villain, nothing more. Kind of a waste of 7 minutes if you ask me.

This was kind of a mess storytelling wise. There are questions that get resolved before they're even asked, stuff gets revealed without any context, problems get solved in one sentence/action, etc. Most side characters are extremely annoying with their screaming around and overacting about everyone and everything. Also, I don't know anything about beauty peagents or Thai beauty culture, but I think most of those "beauty queens", Englot included, sometimes look like they're in their late 30s to early 40s with the tons of heavy makeup they're wearing. Everything in this drama is just so unnatural, I mean, for example, why do they wear extremely noticeable fake eyelashes and 2cm thick mascara to bed?

I'm not the biggest fan of Englot, they look way too professional and scripted at all times, which makes what happens in front of the camera not very believable. In this case the director makes it even worse, as we see in the behind the scenes footage. Does he really need to direct every hug and reaction? Let them do it naturally to go with the flow, why is there a need to perfectly place the arm 5cm more to the right so it makes them extremely conscious of their every movement? He should probably shoot the real PR footage for these contests instead of dramas or movies, then he can satisfy his OCD to his hearts content.

Definitely agree with you. In Asia (or at least Japan which is the only entertainment culture I'm familiar with) it's like that for 30+ years. In Japan the "sexiest scene of the year in tv" is when they show a model turned actress, who probably did three digits worth of bikini and underwear shoots before, in her sports underwear after working out (no joke, really happened a few years ago). Either do it realistic, do it like they did in Affair or just cut the scene instead of completely devaluing it like they did in ep 5.1. Unfortunately I think we'll get a lot more of those scenes in the upcoming GLs because The Loyal Pin did it the same way Apple did, completely clothed and without any shown touching except for arms, shoulders, face and the obligatory hand running up the leg motion.

One of my most enjoyed (is this even English?) GLs so far. It's cute and playful. Not a lot of depth, but that's mostly because 6 + a special episode is way too short. I loved that the story didn't rely on a prominent homophobic/ignorant/stalker-ish antagonist and that they faced problems any couple, regardless of gender or orientation, could face. The main actresses did a good job and they had great chemistry, but they definitely should get rid of these annoying "let's have sex with our clothes on" scenes if they're not allowed to/don't want to show nudity or believable intimacy (The Royal Pin did this aswell, I hope it won't be a standard in the future). Just cut the camera at an appropriate time instead of half-assing it and therefore completely killing the romance and passion of the scene. The overhead cleavage shots of Folk weren't necessary either if you ask me, but fortunately there weren't that many of them. I guess Orm always wearing a jacket to bed was their attempt at balancing it out.

Can't agree more. I'm not the biggest fan of this particular storyline, but I think JPC does the best GL mini-dramas on Youtube, and, like you said, some are better than the stuff that's shown on TV. In my opinion a big reason for that is, they don't distinguish between same-sex and hetero relationships. Their characters have couple problems instead of most tv dramas which always need to come up with some homophobic/possessive antagonist that wants to ruin the main couples lifes.

There's no need to appreciate pekochan because they just threw the Japanese subs into an app or through a site that translates them via Google Translate and then uploaded it somewhere. They didn't even clean it up for the million grammar, context and pronoun errors the Japanese language creates if you just translate whole sentences with a machine translator.

Sorry, very late, but you can find them on drama-otaku and on their discord (I guess you'll find the discord link on their twitter).

Well, this was 25% advertisement for this coffee shop, 25% tracking shots and 50% actual drama. I also don't know what kind of camera or filter they always use in every series, but it makes my eyes hurt after a while because the picture is extremely dull, colorless and kind of blurry, which in turn makes it look pretty cheap. The JPC equivalent of this collab (My Wednesday) was a bit better storywise and it especially looked a lot better.

Thanks for the comment. Seems like they, so far, skipped the actual beginning of the story then (the synopsis here on the page). Which is a shame, because it was my favorite "arc" of the anime's epic first episode. I wonder why a popular actor like Narito Ryo is listed as Gorou, but ok, maybe we'll get a flashback in a later episode.

Did I miss something or did they just skip over everything that's in the MDL synopsis, aka the beginning of the story and the explanation of why Aqua and Ruby are who they are? (just skipped through Ep1 so far, so please spoiler me)

I liked the first 5 1/2 episodes. Light-hearted humor with a bit of seriousness because of the cases. But then, as did so many other JDrama comedies in the last few years, it did an almost complete 180 and became a mostly dead serious law drama about life and death, people against the state, oppression of the weak, yada yada, yada, so the only comedy/fun that remained was the fact that the FL was a JK who behaved like a kid sometimes. I wish they would've simply stuck with the comedy or make it a serious drama from the beginning. With this half-assedness I really can only like one aspect or the other.
Also, the case about the woman who scammed people and got scammed herself by a host is based on a real story, which was a pretty cool touch.

In my opinion, this whole shipping business is getting out of control anyways, or already is, at least when it comes to GL couples (don't really watch BL, so can't speak for that). It's almost as bad as the Japanese Idol scene if you look at Social Media.

I wish they would at least announce it if they drop something or mark it as such. Just like all the asadoras. Started and just abandoned without notice.