yeou_bi

Well, I think for me it comes down to the production. What I mean is that BL (in movie or drama form ) in Japan so far has been a niche market with a low budget. Their cast usually consists of unknown actors who only appear in other low budget productions or maybe as a guests you immediately forget about in a mainstream production. I always thought that was sad. For example, many actors who start with tokusatsu end up doing only these low budget productions and to me it always felt that, the moment they do BL, they probably won't be able to go mainstream (and by 'not mainstream' I don't mean indie productions but just cheap productions). So when BL officially becomes a mainstream thing (and that is what I think is happening since there are more and more productions with mainstream actors), I think the overall quality will increase as well and it will stop being as stigmatized as it is.

Yo, what? Is it now officially a thing that Japan does BL with actually known actors and not just actors you only know when you watch cringy BL? I mean, I'm not complaining and that's a good trend but I never thought I'd see that day.

This was really good but aw, man, I hate when they base a drama on a manga and then just kind of leave off in the middle. What happened to Shimura's wife? Why was Shimura framed in the first place? What happened to Nishikawa? I know I could probably read the manga but I also really like the interactions between Nishikawa and Hayashi and that's heavily based on how the actors portray them. Meh.

The whole premise is super creative and the twists and turns were very unexpected but this is 100% a nekketsu kyoushi kind of drama and thus there just were a lot of very preachy scenes. I get that they're important because they address important topics but if you've seen one of these dramas, you've kind of seen them all and that spoiled it a little for me

Tbh, I chalked it just off as Nakashima Tetsuya being who he is. While I love most of his movies, I think his directing can be a bit confusing. That can be brilliant when it's based on a very good, very structured novel (like Confessions) but since this seems like an original screenplay, they maybe tried to cram in too much at once. Or well, that's at least the impression I got. But well, since I really didn't like his previous film, I figured that maybe his movies just don't work for me any longer and didn't think much about the why.

That's exactly how I felt about it. Such a waste of what could have been a perfect movie.

Thanks for the tip! :)

Thanks for the article. The part about lakorns was very insightful because I actually did look for ones to watch in 2010 and everything I found sounded so crazy, I eventually gave up. So I'm glad to hear that things have improved in recent years.

I would also agree that strong women in jdramas tend to be career women or older than the ML. I'm not sure whether there have been many changes in the last ten years though, because I remember dramas from around 2010 that already had those kind of relationships/female characters. I haven't seen much pre-2000 stuff so I'm not exactly sure but I would say a major change came around 2000.

I love Claudia and she looks good in blonde but damn, that wig.......

You raise a lot of important issues I totally agree with but there's something in particular I only realized bothered me when you spelled it out and that's Mew playing a 19 year old.
I mean, I like stories set in school so I'm used to actors being too old for the roles they play. I also understand the logic behind it because I guess there are less issues with casting adults in their twenties than with casting minors and it makes some stories less icky. But here it actually bothered me because there's a divide between how mature Mew appears and how immature Tharn acts. It makes sense when he for example explains that he won't move out because that would be like him admitting that there's anything wrong with being gay when it's not. But it's just even creepier when he then molests Type because it seems as though he should know that what he does is sick. If he appeared younger that would still be very messed up but then I could at least give him the credit of the doubt and believe that maybe he can still learn. And sure, 28 doesn't make a person a perfect adult, but the way Tharn is presented makes him seem like the kind of person who fully knows that he is emotionally manipulative and I wonder if it was slightly less awkward if they had just chosen a younger actor who seems a little less mature.

I really liked it in the beginning with their odd friendship and all the flashbacks, but then it really lost direction in the second half. Now that I finished it, I honestly don't feel satisfied. It's not even like "ugh this sucked", but more like, what even was the point of it all?

This is like fluff fanfiction come to life. You know, the kind with like 3k words that you read it and think "awww" and "I would never pay to read this". And then it's over and you almost immediately forget about it. As a drama this is not bad but it's also a waste of characters that could've had depth.

Yuri was definitely 100% batshit crazy but I appreciate that we also got to see her perspective. Like, she wasn't just crazy for the sake of it, I could actually see how she would've turned out like that.

And wow, in retrospect Mayu's long-winded plan seems ridiculously futile because of course Yuri would not actually give a shit about her son.

I've only seen him in two movies which aren't even on the list because one was Vietnamese and the other Russian. This guy is seriously international.

Honestly, the whole drama is but in the beginning it was worse because then she still clearly said no over and over again. I just can't get over what kind of toxic relationship the drama promotes as romantic and that stuff like this still gets made. I mean, whatever it was that made him so obsessed, he knew nothing about her and I didn't get the feeling he really wanted to.

I honestly can't get over how stupidly middle class German his name sounds.

I don't hate the drama because it was fun but I think that the relationship between the main couple is suuuuuper messed up. He literally stalks her. He doesn't take no for an answer. He gets angry when he sees her with other men although they're not a couple. He gets angry at HER when another guy forces himself onto her. He constantly turns up at her work. He literally interrupts her work. He manipulates her family. He bribes them with gifts. He's the reason why his grandmother treats HER like a slut although HE forced himself onto her. He eventually manipulates her into falling for him but, I mean, how does that make it okay? She had no choice. He would have followed her for the rest of her life because he became obsessed with her. Why? Because she accidentally dropped incense on him during a funeral and I guess that turned him on.

Yeah, and I'm cool with that because that's a genre I really like. I think I simply saw too many comedies lately and that's why I assumed this would be one of those

Idk why I thought this would become funny but the first episode already makes me worry a lot abut the writer...

And seriously, why couldn't they just leave the brother alone? He was the only nice character but they absolutely had to make him lust after his sister. And why are people in dramas/movies always lusting after siblings who are not related to them by blood anyway? What they're saying basically is "you can't love someone like a sibling if they're not related to you by blood because hormones, I guess".