Welcome to my weekly blog post where I give thoughts on dramas I’m watching but not recapping.
This week I started recapping My Personal Weatherman to give myself a break from sweet romances. MPW is a bit more of a shishito pepper of a romance and sometimes that’s what I need.
This week I finished:
If It’s With You – 君となら恋をしてみても – 2023
A recently aired Japanese BL with 5 episodes.
A young gay high schooler who has given up on love moves to a new school, only to meet a guy who is just his type. And like, the greenest flag ever.
I loved this show from beginning to end. 5 episodes wasn’t enough.
It’s an interesting contrast to the show reviewed below and the other BL that disappointed me recently. It’s another high school BL. We’ve got an outgoing personality with a more restrained personality. There’s falling and people getting food on their face. Someone gets a cold. At no point did anything completely unexpected happen.
That didn’t matter to me. What matters is that Amane and Ryouji feel like real people. In five short episodes I got to know them better than characters I’ve seen in much longer series. I understand why Ryouji is so serious and sleeps all the time. I understand why Amane fluctuates between uncomfortable honesty and desperately hiding his true feelings.
The show is all about the little things. Ryouji and Amane are average high schoolers who aren’t in any real danger or have particularly remarkable talents. They’re special because of the small things we learn about them, the little kindnesses they do for each other, and how important such easily overlooked moments can be.
The actors do a great job, but they aren’t alone on screen. Thanks to the locations they used, I feel like I’ve visited Enoshima in the summer. Even if other people on the internet hadn’t already done it for me, I feel like I could find Ryouji’s family restaurant. There was nice lighting, good camera angles, and a production that was able to tell a story. The music gave certain scenes a feeling of lightness and movement and importance.
The characters, their backstories, their personalities, their world, give these tropes meaning. It’s not just Amane nearly falling so that Ryouji can pull him close and our hearts can flutter. It’s painfully vulnerable Amane, walking without looking, getting pulled back from danger by thoughtful and serious Ryouji.
At the end of the day, if you are so sick of these tropes you can’t stand it, this probably isn’t the drama for you. But I’ll be watching it whenever I want something to make me feel warm inside, like miso soup.
Also, I’ll be watching it again and recapping it, likely as my next show.
I also watched:
Tokyo in April Is… – ４月の東京は… – 2023
A 2023 Japanese BL with 8 episodes.
Two men with an intense history meet again as adults and don’t talk about things.
A story of intense, obsessive love that can survive trauma and parental ‘love’ is one I can get behind. Unfortunately it’s not an easy story to tell and the drama doesn’t pull it off for me.
It’s worth noting that this story is based on a manga and follows it pretty closely. A lot of the story hinges on the slow reveal of what happened in their past while the leads carry on a love affair that feels too fragile for honest communication. The manga could rely on the skill of the artist to render this story. The production has to rely on acting, lighting, camera angles, music, editing, etc.
Since so much is not communicated or shrouded in mystery, the burden of selling the relationship falls on our main characters. Their love isn’t shown by blow drying each other’s hair or eating food off each other’s faces, it needs a more visceral, on-screen chemistry. Looks. Touches. Hot eyes. Lust. Yearning. That’s hard to produce and the actors don’t get there, their big emotional moments often looking forced.
Meanwhile, the camera angles were generic, the editing boring, the music there. It’s not as bad as last week’s Candy Color Paradox, but it’s weak. The actors could have used the help of a more creative, stylized story telling. Super close ups. Jarring camera angles. Shots of meaningful items that represent their passion. Something to help our guys on screen out.
The lowest moment was when the poor actors were running in front of a green screen. It turned what should have been an urgent moment into something strange and off putting. There must have been some reason they couldn’t film them outside, but it is distracting.
On the positive side, at least they were trying to depict the darker parts of the story. There were times when I could ignore the production and enjoy what it was trying to do instead. But ultimately, it’s not a show I’ll casually recommend.