nhii

oh to be named ‘yuri’ at birth and screenwriting GL dramas 😌

i found it hilarious that 'miwa' was the real maid's last name and our FL's (the fake maid) first name. girlie had her oshi calling her by her first name the whole time lol. and i loooved the characters (except for kido ofc, dude was borderline stalker and annoying af) and the stellar acting performances, especially Yamaguchi Sayaka's, really liked the way she delivered her lines in this drama and the way she showed how much her trust in miwa changed over time with just her aura and attitudes.

i'm also not so sure about the ending, the final episode was rushed and didn't provide enough solutions to the problems. it was ok until the final episode though. i'm guessing the manga was still on-going at the time and they ran out of source material to adapt so they just improvised the last 10 minutes.

this was fun! i've wanted to watch it since the day they announced the adaption, but unfortunately it didn't get any subs and fell into my oblivion. just rmb about it recently and decided to watch with jpn captions. and i enjoyed it a lot more than i expected.

in case you're wondering if there's any romance between them, i can confirm that there is not. they had nothing but admiration and respect for each other. although there's a few... fangirl's fantasy scenes, which i'm pretty sure it won't hurt anyone. so if you don't find the age gap off-putting and are willing to overlook a few plot holes, this is a treat!

highly recommend this to any otaku whose oshi is an actor (iykyk). i'm one myself and boi was it relatable lol.

you know… if you’re really gonna go on incognito mode, at least put on a face mask when you’re outside. you would think that’s already common knowledge but it seemed like the screenwriter had forgotten that face masks exist. overall it was a good drama, just that one detail irked me so much because i was already rooting for them even though i didn’t know what exactly was happening at the time.

exactly. maki thought that it would be selfish of him to be happy and that he owed yukiko her happiness. especially after ep5 when maki noticed there was something between aoki and yukiko, he kept setting aoki up with yukiko, giving them chances to meet in private. and aoki followed every ball thrown by his owner like a good boi he is 😭 thank goodness aoki sorted out his true feelings before it was too late.

if only this drama had been even more popular, maybe a sequel would’ve been approved more easily. i don’t mind if it stays as a gem, but i do need to see a sequel 💔

the fact that ever since the kainuma case, maki had always awaited death to reunite with suzuki but in the final ep he said he would be waiting for aoki, it marked a HUGE development for maki. like… we don’t talk about this enough, maki now has not only a reason to stay alive but also a reason to actually live!! T-T

maki is one of my all time fave characters, the more we see him the more we understand why every character in the story was so fond of him and paid him so much respect. a lot of the manga fans was against another live-action adaptation at first because everyone believed maki was impossible to adapt to screen, but i’m so glad that this drama has proved them wrong and brought maki to life successfully.

yes it’s subtle but not too subtle, it’s so gay and still not gay enough lol. i really hope they’ll give it another season, or at least a 90-minute SP episode because there’s still so much good material left to adapt. they don’t have to rush, because we’ll be waiting <3

(god, i nearly completed my reply and then my chrome crashed asjhgdjsk)

yesss you got that right, or more like now we're on the same page. that's exactly my understanding of their relationship too. yukiko probably wanted to start over with aoki because she knew that this time her feelings were different from when she was with suzuki, and she was right but unfortunately for her this time it also wasn't the same for aoki.

and you're not annoying at all, i'm actually glad to find another one who's also going crazy over this drama. i've been re-watching some eps too, still don't want to let go of the characters yet.

some side notes from the sequel manga (himitsu season 0): maki met suzuki in college. since maki was always at the top of their college and suzuki always came second, they knew about each other but never actually talked until maki had to reach out to suzuki to ask him about a case. before suzuki, maki never had any friends, he was that kind of student who's extremely brilliant but very hard to approach... you know, and due to some circumstances he hardly had any time for friends. and then some time later, suzuki introduced maki to yukiko. so the 3 of them all went to the same college and probably had had the same classes sometimes before but never really talked until suzuki came in the picture.

i'm not really sure why himitsu wasn't labeled BL in the first place. i'm not mad about it though. BL isn't really the main point of the story, it's a psychological mystery first and foremost that aims to mature female audience (josei/shoujo). it just happens to feature a love storyline that isn't very heterosexual, and love is love 🥰

i mostly agree with what you said but i just want to add that i don't think yukiko doesn't love suzuki. she was already dating suzuki before she met maki so i guess she was already somewhat fond of and cherished suzuki at the time. and when suzuki introduced her to maki, it was the beginning of her feelings for maki. in ep5 when maki had a flashback to suzuki's funeral, we saw yukiko screaming and bawling her eyes out and then cut to her bedroom with maki watching over her, if you notice closely you'll see there was a bandage on her wrist, implying that she tried to killed herself but unsuccessful. she loved both of them, suzuki was probably more like a close family to her. what could she do when the one she loved (but couldn't have) killed the one she was closest with? and then imagine her seeing maki constantly (and internally but still very obvious) blaming himself for what happened...

the fact that yukiko was often called "the female version of maki" also implied so many things, i think the 3 of them all saw the similarities between maki and yukiko. i'm not gonna delve any deeper into why suzuki loved yukiko in the first place (it was so obvious lol), but it seemed that yukiko was also aware of their similarities and even admired maki for what she lacked. suzuki was the only one she had but maki couldn't have. yeah it sounds so selfish of her but she couldn't help it that suzuki loved her and wouldn't look at maki. she knew too well even if she left suzuki, maki still wouldn't look at her and suzuki still wouldn't respond to maki's feelings.

well, one door closed, another opened. that was when aoki came in the picture, broke the cursed triangle and changed everything like you said above. hehe good boi aoki.

sorry, somehow this has become a yukiko apologist type of comment. i just feel like her feelings often got overlooked/misunderstood, every time i try to be in her shoes i can't even imagine what hell she's gone thru getting caught in that damned triangle (of course not as miserable as maki, but still...).

my rating is about as high as yours 😂 (i mean, what are the odds of your favorite actors starring in a live-action of your favorite manga and it actually turned out to be a great adaptation made with so much dedication and respect? i feel like i’m the luckiest fan in this universe lol) and i still think the rating here is not high enough heh.
i agree that the drama would have been easier to follow had there been clarification for some parts. i don’t think the drama was poor in any way though. if only some viewers would try to overcome that and see things from the characters’ POVs 😩
and don’t even get me started on “the acting and chemistry” part of that review hahaha. i guess we just have agree to disagree with them.

i wouldn’t give too much thoughts about that review. the fact that the problems they mentioned could’ve been solved if they’d paid attention to some details like you said above just goes to show that the review itself isn’t very convincing. some people just don’t get the beauty of this drama and some of them even refuse to get it. they’re probably just not the target audience lol.

there were 2 scenes where we heard maki’s thoughts talking about “being taken away” or “being pulled away” and because of the ambiguity of japanese, i’ve been wondering if those words actually had double meanings.

The first scene was in EP3 when maki tried to control the helicopter because aoki was out of his mind. maki’s thought went “don’t take me/him just yet, suzuki”, not sure if he meant himself or aoki or both of them, as there was no object or pronoun in this sentence. personally i’d like to think maki was telling suzuki not to take him away, like he had always expected he would “meet” suzuki again someday but not today, this meaning also connected to his monologue later in EP11 when aoki hugged him: “suzuki, i’m sorry. i’m afraid i can’t make it over there for some time”.

The second scene, the one you mentioned above, was at the end of EP4, when maki just learned that yukiko was infected and didn’t have long to live. “i had already expected this, i knew he/she would be taken away” as he was looking at the photo of him, suzuki and yukiko. i’m still not sure if he was saying that he expected aoki would be attracted to yukiko, or that he expected yukiko would be taken away by suzuki as in suzuki had chosen her all along and not him. either way, the sadness in his eyes at that moment though T-T

Anyways these are just my thoughts. a lot of hidden layers started to peel themselves on my 2nd time watching, these 2 scenes included. It’s just wild how this drama messes with our heads.

Also, looove your review <3

just think simple 😂
aoki doesn’t have to chase after maki because maki will always wait at a certain place for aoki, he won’t disappear or be gone for too long before they meet again.

i’m guessing he had 2 different guns, one was legally provided to him as a police and every bullet shot from this gun had to be duly reported, another one was an unofficial and his personal gun that he could use anytime in case of emergency, self-defense or for unlawful purposes which is why he had to always hide it. it seemed that the book gave him a peace of mind and he couldn’t sleep without it so he always held that book while sleeping, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it was related to suzuki and made him dream of suzuki. or maybe that book has already been explained somewhere in season 0 and we still haven’t gotten to read it yet.

in Episode 3, when the ninth’s members were at the diner (~@11:27), one of them said that the book was rumored to be carved hollow to fit a gun inside. iirc it was said the same in the manga. other than that scene, that rumor was never confirmed (by maki) so it was either true or depends on everyone’s interpretation lol

should be an everyday thing at the ninth, with the regularity about as much as okabe stopping maki from doing reckless things 🤣🤣

it goes to show that they didn’t only respect the original work but also respected the audience/fans. they left space for interpretation and trusted the audience to get it. everytime maki and yukiko were in the same room it’s just so interesting to me, like we could feel that they cared for and respected each other but they also kept a certain distance, the frustration and jealousy being oppressed deep down letting the tension explode 😂 so fun to watch. it’s a wonder that suzuki and aoki could stand in the middle of that dynamic lol

ikr those maki-yukiko confrontation scenes are even better to rewatch now that we have finished the entire drama. it’s really the art of hinting and being subtle with their words and emotions that keeps you on edge and makes you yearn for more. i know the BL elements here got a lot of us excited but the way they balanced the tension of the triangle relationship was also noteworthy and impressive. and not only they followed the manga closely, they also made it all possible to be a primetime TV drama. the more i think about it the more i realize how brilliant they were for this adaptation, such good writing and performances all around.

oh god i saw the bluray announcement too and it retails for ¥35K 😭😭😭 part of me died when i saw the price tbh. it won’t be out until September though so hopefully i’ll save up enough in time. also hope that the bluray will be selling well and this drama will get the popularity it deserves so that we’ll get more resources and translations, maybe even a sequel consideration 🙏

came back here to say that i want to give all the flowers and awards to those 2 big drops of tears that rolled down Maki’s cheeks right after he heard Aoki say “Maki-san, I like you”. such perfect timing. just beautiful.

yesss.