Honglou Meng

Thank you! To be honest, I can't wait for it to be over. I feel compelled to see it through because (a) I have written a predictive review, and I need to see how many of my predictions come true -- so far, all of them, (b) it's only 2 more episodes left, and I have already seen 7, and (c) each episode is only 20 mins. or so long, which means, with generous skipping/fast-forwarding, it should take no longer than the average length of a Lady Gaga video. But, Jesus Christ, the script is dreadful. And the two reasons I can overlook bad scripts in a TBL, and why I often come back to it -- charm, and convincing depictions of gay intimacy -- are also missing. The kissing scenes between the student and the teacher were painful to watch. And don't even get me started on the dead-fish kisses (in 2025!) between the other two, which just reminded me of the girl from The Ring. Is there a union strike in Taiwan we don't know about?

Because of You at least had Lee Shi Kang, who's divine to look at. And it was better made. But I can't think of the last time a TBL seemed both well-made and well-acted. Unknown? Don't get me wrong, Unknown was tropes-galore too, but it was gorgeously shot, and the actors did their job. But here...

Anyway, if anyone else here likes this show, I'm happy for you, and please don't come for me. But having also had a glimpse at Eternal Butler and Exclusive Love , I worry TBL is going down the path of Thai BL in preferring quantity over quality, which, given its unevenness to begin with, does not bode well.

I wish they wouldn't! :) I wish they'd stop!

P. S. Just looked up Theory of Love. It has Gun, and for that reason alone, I cannot watch it. I'm still pissed off about Not Me, which everyone told me was this great sociopolitical drama, and which nearly made me quit all BL for good. It has all the political sophistication of a sixth former. (Which, come to think of it, is an insult to a sixth former. They're probably reading Leviathan.) Black for bad and White for good? Revolutionary! Also, I know the cheese stands alone here, but who thought it was a good idea to cast Gun as the head of a vigilante group? He has all the authority and bearing of a teddy bear.

Okay, rant over. And if you're a fan of Gun and reading this, I'm sorry.

Urgh. I'm with you on Until We Meet Again. The only thing revolutionary about that series was that it began by burying the gays rather than ending with it -- which is a whole new level of offensive. (Gays cannot be happy unless they suffer first and kill themselves, you see...)

I defended the second episode strongly on this page, but even I found the third episode draggy. It could have been trimmed down to about 30-40 minutes, and that would have been perfect. I also think the amount of life captured through smartphones could have been limited. (I too grew up before smartphones!) I rather enjoyed the date between Fou4Mod and Chian, and the rapidity with which Chian dropped Fou4Mod when he got a message from Bua pained and moved me. But quite a bit of that first half -- to borrow a metaphor from smartphones -- was just bloatware.

You already know my feelings on ITSAY. :)

So far, I hate Bua. But my past is full of Buas.

I’m angry with Chian. But my past is full of Chians.

I’m frustrated by Fou4Mod, but I *was* Fou4Mod (minus the cuteness and the hotness).

Baabin, might you be the sensible one after all? That person in the friend group who saw through all the lies and cut through all the bullshit?

I think it’s a sly way to make fun of product placement while placing the product. lol

Knowing who’s the mind behind this show, and given the portrait that’s emerging of Chian, I fear this is not going to end well, and that our boys won’t get together. I hope to be proven wrong, or perhaps the truth is the boys are not good for each other anyway. But I fear a heartbreak coming…

Which is fine. Love is painful. But Boss, you are also making it harder and harder to trust you, I won’t lie. You do love to make your gays suffer…

My prediction about how the MDL audience will react to Gelboys:

Camp 1: Is anything gonna happen in this show?
Camp 2: Nothing happens in this show, and that’s why I love it.

Camp 1: All that disposable income, spending all your time in shops and malls, taking 5 solid minutes to decide between a medium and a large size… gurl, get real!
Camp 2: All that disposable income, spending all your time in shops and malls, taking 5 solid minutes to decide between a medium and large size… this is so realistic, and I love it!

Chian watching an Asian drama at 2x…

I feel seen.

Also, this show might well be Star Trek: The Next Generation for me. Gay love rectangles (squares? quadrangles?), boys getting their nails done and flaunting it, the friends contriving to get the boys together, no one hurling homophobic abuse on the streets…

It’s science fiction, right?

And I love it. If only reality were (or had been) like this!

Only 10 mins. into the third episode, but I’m not a fan of Bua. He seems like a classic narcissistic prick-tease, a familiar breed from my university days. Chian, baby, run far, run fast.

I disagree, because I would have likely found it conventional and boring. (Let’s face it, a backstory in most BLs is tantamount to dead parents and bad girlfriends.)

But I can see that a lot of people found the second episode a drag. I myself found it riveting.

EDIT: I still haven’t seen the third episode. So I have no idea what that’s like!

I think that's kind of the point. Normally, whenever I hear the first strum of a guitar in a BL, I run far, run fast. But, the fact that they play quite badly and sing as badly makes me think that they wanted to depict what your average high-school band sounds like. Fortunately, the pullulating romantic tension helped me tune out the "music". :)

What are you talking about? I just saw Sei and Kazuaki (the good one) traipsing around Shinjuku not five minutes ago! It's leather night at Bad Billy's. :)

I mean, I said this below, but, Fuji really didn't *give a fuck* now, did he? If only he had, Sei should have been happy.

What a film! And what a line! I can still sometimes see Narita Ryo folded up on that kitchen stool like a smouldering iguana. I should rewatch it!

I love SKAM! Though nothing can beat the original SKAM for me. If you haven't, I recommend all of it, except Season 4, which you should avoid at all costs. But Skam France is the closest that came to capturing the magic of the original. So I'm with you there. (Are you watching Gelboys already? It reminds me very much of Skam.)

On Hidamari: I've written a whole review. Go check it out if you dare! Though I don't recommend it. :) And yes, they are babies, in that, just when you put the camera in front of them, and want them to blow you a kiss, they'll turn their heads away and ignore you instead. Which reminds me, I need to go and get some diapers for the next crop of JBL directors... (/Just teasing!)

Lol. I will confess, I couldn't finish Miseinen, in no small part because I cringed at the kisses. It always felt like Kamimura was going to bite Motojima with his teeth half-closed, chattering from cold, than I ever felt they kissed. (Perhaps it was better in the later episodes?)

Mind you, I didn't hate Miseinen. It just wasn't the right time. "Hidamari", on the other hand... 🙃

If you thought Bokurano was explicit, you should see The Pornographer series, or films such as Dangerous Drugs of Sex or The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese. Japan can go all the way there, and did! My diagnosis? Two things have happened:

1. A new kind of moralism has started to creep in, as if JBLs were going through a Will & Grace phase. This may have something to do with making same-sex romances more palatable to a broader audience, especially as LGBT acceptance grows in Japan. (Hence the Will & Grace comparison.) But I haven't seen a decent kiss or a half-decent sex scene in a JBL since Bokurano or Taikan Yoho. By contrast, early BLs like Ai no Kotodama, made in the 90s, are far franker and fuller in their depiction of gay intimacy.

2. The casting of idols. Here, JBLs seem to have taken a leaf from Korea (or perhaps it has always been so, I'm not sure). Idols really don't want to be intimate on screen (especially with a man, I presume) -- not necessarily because they themselves object, but because their agent objects or their manager objects, and all because the fans might object. The difference, both in KBLs and JBLs, between idols-as-actors and actual actors, is undeniable. Actors are much more willing to go further, because it is their job and their vocation. Idols, who are often in BLs to further their career and their brands, don't see it that way.

I'm sure I've generalised quite a bit here. But these are my observations from having plumbed the depths of Japanese BLs for a while.

Not quite a BL, but an anthology series called Kiss x Kiss x Kiss..

This is from a segment called "Atelier Kiss."