Welcome to my weekly blog post where I give thoughts on dramas I’m watching, whether I’m at the beginning, middle, or end. Whatever I’m feeling.
This week I recapped episodes 7-8 of Japanese rom-com Eye Love You, in which the mysterious ending of a picture book is mysterious. I also recapped episodes 7-8 of Japanese Anime A Sign of Affection, wherein Yuki miss-lipreads “kiss” as “hug” and suffers the consequences.
Japan keeps putting out domestic BL dramas and I keep watching them so this week I have an initial review of:
Living with Him – 彼のいる生活 – 2024
Currently airing Japanese domestic college BL, I’m at 3 out of 8 episodes.
After reluctantly becoming roommates with his childhood friend, a young man becomes obsessed with why his attractive and talented roommate is single.
Here’s a highlight from episode 1.
What we’ve got here is childhood-friends-to-lovers, college style (it also comes in High School flavor) mixed with domestic BL.
One of our guys is used to caring for his sisters and was looking forward to finally living alone. The other guy is perfect, handsome, smart, good at sports, but bad at relationships. We’ve got semi-forced cohabitation, a nice height difference, a popular guy and a not-popular guy, all the standard tropes. Again, it may be very familiar.
Once they move in together our less-popular guy becomes fixated on his old friend’s lack of love life. He turns it into a mission to figure out exactly what’s wrong with his perfect friend that’s scaring people away. And since this is also a domestic BL, this happens while they eat together, do chores together, and hang out. This may also be familiar in more than one way.
All this may sound like I’m tired of this kind of plot and I’m not.
I’m enjoying this show quite a bit. It’s more a warning to those for whom this is not Their Genre and Their Tropes. So far, it’s not doing much to break the mold or going anywhere particularly deep. If you’re looking for something different, something deeper, something with high-highs and low-lows, I’m guessing this won’t be for you.
If, like me, you enjoy a peaceful predictable watch sometimes, this may be the right show for you. At this point, I’m hoping the show doesn’t decide to get too interesting, and the next 5 episodes feature more food, college, house cleaning, and slow exploration of feelings. I’ll let you know how it goes!
(In case you were wondering, this drama is based on a manga that is available in English. )