jpny01

Can someone give me a brief summary of what everyone is talking about? All I see is comments complaining about people complaininng about this series, and no actual complaints about the series.

Anyway, it's not great, but only because it's a little generic. But it's very well-excuted and pleasant to watch, and Jung Woo is a lot more likeable in Ep 3. The makeup is so much better than in many of these series where you can actully see white base caked on their faces - this was skillfully blended and not distracting. The music is fine, the camerawork is good, the editing is good - what's not to like?

Although I was traumatized by the rape scene - you know, the one where he adjusted his apron.

That was satire. Adjusting the apron was "mild flirting". We're losing distinctions and any form of forwardness is being condemned as trangressive. It's not. Being an adult means being able to see shades of grey. Every situation has to be looked at individually - blanket judgments are not useful - rather, they're harmful.

I'm at a loss. Nothing made me cringe even a teeny bit, and I cringe easily. Well, I can't stand that triple-take shot they do whenever anything important happens, but every BL does that, so it doesn't count.

There are people that would prefer the romantic climax being holding hands. Any sign of male sexuality is too scary. I'm trying to imagine in what universe anyone would complain about shirtless Jang Eui Soo and I just can't. Maybe if I was from a planet where everyone was hairy multi-tenacled slug creaturs that finds a smooth hard body disgusting or something, but I'd still do him.

The term is "see their breath". :)

I'm glad it's a good way! Your plan might work, IF Bad Buddy is good. It can't be bad by definition if Ohm is in it, but it could still be bad with a shiny muscular hunky bright & sweet-smiling mitigating factor. If you decide not to watch this, I would recommend the whole Leon/Pob story - it's quite nice.

Aww, thanks. You made my day better too.

I've seen Ossan's Love, but not What Did You Eat, which I haven't heard ot - it looks great and i'm looking forward to it - thanks!

I have watchdd them - but I would argue that none of those are BL and are straight up LGBTQ+ dramas. The line between BL and LGBTQ+ is blurred, and that's a discussion that could be debated for pages and pages - but I would say many or most of these qualities::
1) rooted in Yaoi and usually based on a manga or in the Thai case, a novel.
2) written by and aimed at women,
3) the characters are not gay or LGBTQ+ - they are straight, and neither has ever been with or ever will be with another man.
4) element of fantasy
5) loaded with BL tropes like people tripping and being caught & staring at each other
6) characters are idealized beautiful boys with a touch of androgyny (almost universally for the uke - semes are getting more masculine and muscular)
7) seme/uke dynamic, with the uke always shorter, less masculine, and with longer hair, and usually younger (although often the same age)
8) minimized and unappealing female characters (thank God this one is rapidly diminishing - Japan is way in the lead in this catagory, e.g. Hashimoto),
9) "gay" "equality", i..e. male characters are free to bond romantically - and barriers to this are internal, e,g. "but I'm a guy!" it's rarely that they'll be beaten and bullied for it, and friends treat it as normal. In other words, insitutional homophobia is ignored.
10) Sex is minimized and treated like it's a huge thing, usually with the uke behaving like a 12-year old Victorian virgin, even though the characters are high school and college-age boys, and consent is often dubious (again, this is diminishing.)
11) Characters are high school or college kids, even when there is no point to this.

Kieta Hatsukoi had all of these except 8). It's true that there are occassionally exceptions to 11), but they are usually matters of emphasis. For example, Bite Me is not a school drama, but all the ukes are students, although that serves no plot purpose and could have been dispensed with. Likewise, Given was about musicians, but was still in a school setting and could fairly easily have avoided that. Cherry Magic was almost a miracle, with the main characters explicity in their 30s, altough the actors were uncharacteristically younger than their characters to compensate. I think only Machina Keita had hit 30, and not when he was cast.

I'm so over the school setting it's hard to even put into worlds. Japanese BLs are generally better executed in every regard, and the uniforms are a lot cuter - those plaid slacks with the white sneakers kill me. Much better than blue shorts with white socks and black dress shoes. Someone in the Thai Ministry of Education is a sadist. Some of the K-uniforms are cute too.

I don't mind there being villains sometimes. but it can't always be a vengeful ex-gf. It's misogynist, and every once in a while it would be nice if there were some gay characters instead of straight boys that turn gay because caught someone that tripped and they stared at each other for 15 minutes.

I will say that the trip and catch in this was totally perfect - first of all, it fit into the plot beautifully, and second, they already liked each other - it didn't cause it.

Anyway, that was a long-winded way of saying, "I agree with you - I like this series!"

I guess one of the boys in YYY was actually an alien, but that series was so crazy it's hard to be sure. Anyway, I'll put up with the "standard plot" if it's for a quality production like this. One of my favorites is still A Man Who Defies the World of BL - nobody is as good at dry comedy in BL as the Japanese.

The reason I say that is that after all the staring, the main couple never got together, and in fact had a violent break up, which is an achievement if you're not together. Meanwhile, the straight couple sailed smoothly into a relationship. If you market something as a BL story, then one expects BL. The scenes from this week's ep featured a cute head-on-the-shoulder moment for Aek & Aue. But, it was actually just an ad and didn't feature in the story. That's more or less the definition of queer-baiting, isn't it? And if you have a "BL" series, but the only people who get together are straight, what is the message that's sending? Especially when sexual assault is involved in the gay story - Aue wasn't getting what he wanted so he decided to take it by force - that's a dangerous representation that reinforces the homophobic idea that gays are predatory.

There's nothing wrong with making us wait for the couple to get together -that's a standard writing tactic in any genre and increases the satisfaction when it does happen. But after all that slow pacing, for it to build up to a huge and physically violent falling out is too much. The way this was written, I don't really want them to get together - the're obviously poorly suited to each other - at the least the timing is wrong for them.

Haha, I can't read.

Yes, she's adorable - this should be a note to Thai BL that you can have wonderful female characters and it makes the series better. Or, you can have evil petty vengeful shrews which is misogynist and just annoys everyone. For some reason they always go with the latter.

Hey, the use of the movement from Tchaikovski's 6th Symphony in the play is significant - I'll put it in the Recent Discussions section

I'm more of an Ida person, but I can see what you see in him. I want to shake Hashimoto, but I want to hug Ida. Initially.

This is the same ol' BL story we've seen a million times with smal variations, but the execution is excellent. I wish BL would branch out a little, like one of them being an alien or something, instead of the inevitable school boys, one with messy hair, the other neat, with the same girl in every one - it's like an army of clones escaped from somewhere or something. Cherry Magic was a shock to me becaue the characters were in their 30s. I thought people in BLs were euthanized when they graduate from college. Although I have to say the drag Cindarella angle is both uber-cute and funny.

Anyway, I still enjoy this because it's so well done - I appreciate that Japan rarely has horrible and evil characters with petty motives. I also like that the humor is clever and situational and not slapstick. This is sweet and a good antidote to the bleak facade that is our lives.

As I was saying above, the one thing that was a little odd with otherwise really well-thought out interaction overall, was that nobody had any questions at all about what it was like to be an actual god! You'd think if you had one living in your guest room that you'd be tad curious. Instead they were more anxious to have him dress more causally. But there is always an element of fantasy in BL, so I guess we learn to go with the flow.

It's because Aue is such a formidable person that it takes three to take him down. His endless sulking is so draining that they need to operate as a tag team to get close enough to him to strike without falling into comas.

There's a saying that you lose your story 3 times. To the director, the producer, and the editor. The only way to get a story to be how you want is to produce it yourself. Which lead to LBC2 and TT2. So maybe sometimes it's better if it's not just one person's vision - and remember what happened when the writer put her foot down for KinnPorche... most of the novels are full of noncon and other things BL audiences don't much care for, too.

But I still agree with you - if you're going to make a totally different story, then why base it on anything in the first place? It's not like this is a famous novel that you can get marketing mileage out of.

Thank you! I liked that people had resaonable discussions about interpersonal issues instead of sulking somewhere while sappy ballades played to long flashback sequences of great times spent together. The series got torpedoed a bit by COVID, but they did their best to finish it, and it was a good effort. I don't necessarily need there to be no characters behaving badly, but it's nice to see them behave like people, and there can't be enough praise for having a strong and non-spiteful-evil female character. She wasn't treated well, but she understood why and was mature enough to talk it out and move on.

Nobody is asking for sex scenes. I could just as well say, "Why don't you do yourself a favor and go watch children's cartoons if you're so put off by physical love?" (that's a comically exaggerated parallel, but that's what it feels like when people reduce objections to bad writing to being a desire for sex.) The problem everyone has is the story makes no sense, is full of unnecessary drama and characters, and isn't focusing on the main relationship of the story or even the cooking theme - it's just a mess of soap opera tropes. I'm waiting for Aek's evil twin to show up. Actually maybe that explains his sudden asshole behavior - he's tied up somewhere and that's actually his evil twin!

When you have the main couple break up before they even get together, it feels like they're avoiding same-sex romance that's in the source material, in favor of silly drama, and therefore feels like it's both queer-baiting and homophobic.