Welcome to my Saturday blog post, where I give thoughts on dramas I’m watching, whether at the beginning, middle, or end. Whatever I want, because I’m petty that way.
This week, I recapped episodes 29-30 of The Prisoner of Beauty. This show has the worst depiction of cousins. It’s not too nice about ants either.
I also recapped episodes 3-4 of Goddess Bless You From Death. If you like to see a guy terrorized by ghosts and then comforted, this is the show for you. And me.
What did I watch this week? The theme is Japanese BLs with delicious height differences. Let’s start with an initial review of:
Love Begins in the World of If – ifの世界で恋がはじまる – 2025
Currently airing Japanese parallel worlds BL, I’m at 2 of 6 episodes.
A man living his worst life makes a wish for something different at a shrine, collapses, and wakes up to something different.
The other unifying theme between this and my next review would be not-so-tropey BL. As of episode 2, no one has cooked for anyone else, although we had an Old Fashioned Cupcake Moment.
But as mentioned, our size difference is VERY BL
Our sad main character is Akihito, or 彰人 in Japanese. These characters translate to “clear” + “person”, and he’s clearly struggling. His eventual love interest’s name is Ogami or 大狼, which is “big” + “wolf”. He is indeed a Big Wolf.
So our Clear Person is struggling in his sales job because his introverted, reserved personality is not suited for selling people things. It would be my worst nightmare. It doesn’t help that his co-workers suck.
Big Wolf is the coworker he admires, who he’s pretty sure hates him, and it’s his own fault.
But after collapsing in front of a magic mirror at the shrine, everything changes. His coworkers don’t suck. Big Wolf takes him out to have macaroons. Clear Person begins to loosen up and enjoy his new reality.
Everything is blue, well-framed, and sometimes even moves
I tend not to pay too much attention to the visuals unless they are very good or very bad. In this case, the show has this interesting blue tone, which again doesn’t feel that BL to me because it’s visually cold. Romances tend towards warmer colors.
Not only that, they’re moving the camera around to help express our character isolation and loneliness. This is exciting.
This show has me intrigued
Because it’s so not the standard BL, I’m interested to see the BL stuff happen and what it’ll reveal about our main character. Is his being gay part of the reason he’s been so reserved and isolated? Or has he repressed himself so much that he doesn’t realize his own desires?
I suspect we’re in for a bit of A Christmas Carol/The Boy Next World type story. (I mean, they’re basically the same story, right?) Perhaps seeing a different reality will allow Clear Person to change his reality once he returns. But how? And what will he learn about his Big Wolf while in this fantasy reality? Is any of it real, or is he just passed out at a shrine?
At this point, I really don’t know. I’ll have to keep watching.
Our other size difference comes in a final review of:
PUNKS△TRIANGLE – パンクストライアングル – 2025
Recently aired Japanese Punk BL with 8 episodes.
A young man in fashion school gets a chance to create an outfit for the model he idolizes, completely unaware that his partner for the project is the model he idolizes.
Unlike the above show, I pretty much knew where this one was going the entire time. And I enjoyed every minute of it.
It was an excellent adaptation of the manga of the same name, capturing the yearning, confusion, and longing of a love triangle where two of the people involved are secretly the same person.
The show is a lot about duality
As I went on about in my initial review, these guys are PUNKS. But they are also really cute. Our lead, who is a model by day and a fashion student by night, depicts this duality in the clearest way possible.
When he’s a model, he is gorgeous, confident, and worldly. When a fashion student, he couldn’t use a safety pin without drawing blood. His love interest is overwhelmed and awed when around the model, but initially dismissive and then charmed by the fashion student.
And while it is less obvious, his love interest has a similar duality. Cold and withdrawn with all the other students, he reveals his sweet, open, vulnerable self to the model at first, and then his fashion student persona.
Truth is, this is how a lot of relationships work, without the whole secret-model-identity. You meet someone, you see their surface-level self, and then you get to know the person underneath.
I like that the double life feels essential to their love story
I mean, kids don’t try this at home. But I’m not sure our cold fashion student would have fallen for either the model or the other student on their own. Nor would he have been able to see the different sides of them. And our model wouldn’t have been able to see the softer side of our cold fashion student without meeting him as the model.
All the points to both actors for being able to portray this combination of sweet vulnerability while also coming off as (TV safe) punks.
And bonus points to the required Japanese drama dramatic runnnnnnnnnnning scene for making sense in the story too.
I could nitpick, but they’re the usual issues with shorter Japanese dramas and their budgets. Unless you can’t stand punks or get past the idea of a model pulling off a double life, I recommend this.
Between this, the show above, and School Trip: This Drama’s Name Is Too Long, I feel spoiled by Japanese BLs right now.
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