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swimming in the BL vortex
Naked Dining: Love, Life and Liberation japanese drama review
Completed
Naked Dining: Love, Life and Liberation
23 people found this review helpful
by BL Compilations
Apr 14, 2023
12 of 12 episodes seen
Completed 5
Overall 7.0
Story 5.0
Acting/Cast 8.5
Music 8.0
Rewatch Value 2.5

started well, went downhill at ep 6

Overall: somehow an awesome slice of life/cooking/comedy series devolved into cliched plot points. My advice is to watch episodes 1-5 and then episodes 11 & 12. 12 episodes about 20 minutes each, aired on GagaOOLala.

Content Warnings: past death not shown, non con kiss, slap

What I Liked
- funny moments (the undressing, the van driving off, that look and the crow sounds at the end)
- realistic reaction to an accidental fall and catch
- cooking/the food looked delicious
- Mahiro's friend/coworker (wish we had seen more of that love story in the present)
- the villagers (much rather have had more screentime with them)
- Mahiro supportive of the naked dining
- managed to subvert something in ep 11 but it was due to (yet another) miscommunication

Room For Improvement
- they used cliched plot points including poor communication in order to drive the plot (and how in the final episode do they still have terrible communication skills)
- I ended up disliking Mahiro, wish they showed more in the flashbacks so we'd understand Mahiro better because he seemed very selfish and immature
- Souta was too dumb, at first I thought it was a bit endearing but they pushed it into the unbelievable area
- the pacing could have been better, I think 8 or 10 episodes instead of 12, plot went in circles, why on earth did episode 12 start 1 week after episode 11
- the non con kiss and slap both felt dated and not needed
- comedy mostly vanished
- odd things: why is the house just sitting there for 6 months? why did he have that band aid, they could have easily shown him find it as he went through those boxes, the boss and wife took a train how far for dinner? that potential buyer was oversharing to fit the plot, what was with that thing with the grandma? at the end
- based on the title, I expected a certain scene and I'm disappointed we didn't get to see it
- so she's all good now with dating the boss???
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