ayden

It’s… good. I understand the reason why the whole brother, plus funeral, plus succession plot exists but I feel that, because of that, very little time is spent (and we already have very few episodes) developing their affection towards each other—if it somehow ends up working it’s because the actors know how to deliver attraction at the level of physicality and not because the narrative demonstrates, in an effective manner, a turning point in which death drive becomes “love”. Takahashi Hiroto as Odajima, in particular, compensates for this narrative gap very well: do I want to kill him or do I want him for myself? It’s a delicious duality (complemented by Wada Masanari’s amoral horniness as Kataoka) which he’s capable of conveying with his gaze alone, but that gap still ends up leaving the latter term (“love”) necessitating, in terms of narrative, of the dead friend backstory in order to hold both of them together relationally; and yet… it’s not so much love in the sense of boys’ love romanticism… What ends up grounding their relationship, for me, is less the fact that they have a person and a past in common and more that Odajima’s self-destructiveness, fueled by a boyhood composed by blood and homicide, ends up finding a type of solace and mitigation through Kataoka’s own detachment from life itself. “You can kill me—I won’t stop you from doing what you came here to do: but aim at the right place, go on, if that is your will and your purpose then shoot… but at the right place—shoot the one that actually deserves it.” It’s a brief conclusion and it deserved to be backed by more scenes exploring their affective entanglement in the present time of the narrative, but the very fact that it chooses to resolve with a “not today—today you’re here still” ends up being effectively enlivening in spite of that.

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Didn’t like it that much and probably only finished because they’re cute to look at (and I hope they really are together). First half is better than the second but it is still boring most of the times and amateurishly executed overall. I think the positive is that they (Chance as Tuo and Wang Jyun-hao as Jun-xi) have cute and sensual moments and they work, that there is a lesbian couple present in the narrative (even though they have unfortunately almost no screen time and zero actual romance) and that our protagonists were already quite smitten with each other as little queer kids. Family plot ends in a queer-friendly way but, in my view, not in a very satisfying one because the conclusion’s too facile and anti-dramatic. I actually prefer what precedes it: the brother’s tough love confronting Jun-xi with the reality of the closet is a more dramatically robust allyship and it is what ends up empowering him to actually come out. Julie Yuan as You-mei is a charming comic relief and Lin Chia-wei’s Wen-sen as romantic conflict leads nowhere: it is there and at the same time never makes itself present in the narrative. Tuo’s main issue ends up being overly internal and psychological (“we need to break up because your life will be easier without me”), which is an insufferable cliché in BL regardless of the country. But his possessiveness is quite comical. And spicy. Very hot.

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