Indeed, I have discovered aznv.tv. Yes, we're very happy together.
KimuTaku is very secure in his masculinity. And hot in drag. Hell, hot any which way.
Orange Days
Since she wrote so many of my favorites I decided to look at some of the other works of scriptwriter Kitagawa Eriko
This is basically a repeat of Aishiteiru to Itte Kure with the genders reversed. It was enjoyable enough to watch, but I think Aishiteiru was better done, and it was kind of annoying to see the same elements repeated in this one. I did really enjoy the world-traveling manwhore friend's subplot, though.
Ikebukuro West Gate Park
HELLA FUN.
Takashi King (Kubozuka) is like Senpai from SOS only MORE. I loff him.
His sexuality is so malleable and... effervescent.
I love Makoto (Nagase) too. He's so intellectually stupid (トラとウマ(笑<3)) but he's got such a strong inner character that everyone ends up turning to him almost unconsciously. Even his name means like "a true heart." I do wish we might have seen him just like destroy someone, since he was supposed to be this badass fighter (even a complete high school flashback would be good), but I'm happy he's left that lifestyle behind him.
I totally suspected who the killer was from the first ep.
This series is so gritty and funny and awesome. I love how perverted *everyone* is. Heee. It looks like a really fun place to live.
I'm sure there was more male-male kisses in this series than male-female kisses. Sooo much random fanservice. I wonder whose decision the gayness was, because often it was just random acts of gayness, not words. Writer, director, the actors themselves? Anyway it was GREAT.
I LOVED that the writers gave us Shou, the man who used to be a woman. And the show and characters were totally accepting of him and awesome.
The lack of smart female characters is kind of annoying... except for Chiaki I guess? But even she's stupid for love... And Kana is smart of course. But then they make Kana really skanky to turn people off. I think she's great though.
The series made women kind of hard to form the same bonds with that men formed with men because the women were all so ditzy. The men treat women sort of like pets you have sex with. And then the mom making onigiri for the battle because "This is the only thing women can do." ::rolls eyes::
Watanabe Ken suteeeekiiiiii!!! (Just like his character's nickname "Handsome"! God, his senpai love is so adorable.)
Why did Watanabe Ken have to resign? What was he taking responsibility for? The fact that there were no arrests? Oh, maybe what Makoto accused him of, of sitting back and letting Yamai and the crazy yakuza stir things up so that he could come in and crush both gangs when they started fighting.
Also I was confused about how we knew that little boy and girl. I don't remember them from before. Who stabbed the little boy? And why is Watanabe Ken's wife still in the hospital after a few years? Can't she live at home in a wheelchair, or go to an assisted care facility? It must be really boring for her to always be in the hospital bed. She could be the detective agency receptionist! (OMG when can I see the special?!)
Yamapi had like no screen presence. How the hell did he win best supporting actor for this?
Ballet in black leather pants is OBVIOUSLY the way to go to lead a street gang war. It's so clear to me now! I always felt that ballet boy's motivations needed more explanation though. I mean he's so bizarre. Maybe there is no rational explanation, only his strange desire to carve out his own country.
With good shows I always write fics in my head. Sometimes I have to pause the video because the real show is distracting me from the show in my head. Like right now the fic in my head is about how Watanabe Ken finds Makoto after he leaves the battleground. (No, I don't slash them.)
But the thing with this show is that the stuff I imagine comes *true*.
Like: "Oh, haha, wouldn't it be funny if two policemen randomly kissed here? ...OH MY GOD."
Haha, the policemen's porn reading/masturbation in the hospital gives お見舞い a whole new meaning. ::squints at kanji:: Wow, that almost... works.
If the drama was like this, I can only imagine how risque the manga is.
Evidence of Takashi/Makoto Pure Love:
-Takashi comes onto Makoto in the onsen in the FIRST EPISODE. No, like, canonically. You cannot convince me that that's not what the actors were playing right then. And just to drive the point home, the two times they're together in the bath, the director pans past these two other older guys sitting very close with their arms around each other.
-Quote from Wikipedia:"In the TV version, Takashi has a girlfriend named Jessie, but in the manga he is single and appears/rumoured to be gay."
-Makoto sees Takashi saying "aishiteruyo" to his gf and is disgusted and leaves. (I thought it was adorable though.)
-But then later on when his girlfriend really needs Takashi, Takashi totally ignores her.
-Takashi wants Makoto to join his gang because he wants to own Makoto's body and loyalty. He wants an expression of commitment. Makoto's l33t fighting skillz would be useful to his gang. (And also there's the sexing up he maybe wants to do.)
-But when Makoto insists on being opposed to gangs in general, Takashi gives up his throne and DISBANDS THE G-BOYS for Makoto. And kisses him in front of his gang. Because it's JUST THAT OBVIOUS what the deepest relationship, the real love story on this show is.
So, uh, I want MORE.
WHERE are all the Takashi/Makoto fics?!? Seriously, point me to them.
But if we can't have Takashi/Makoto...
Makoto should have stayed with Kana. They were hot together and I really liked her. And sex with her is the only time he wasn't impotent (with women). (HAHA his impotency is *hilarious*.) I don't understand why he dumped her... I don't even think he *did* dump her, but somehow they were both talking about how they were saying goodbye.
I think he dumped her because he probably either:
-is scared by sex
-feels guilt for Hikaru
-needs to be dominated but is scared of that and doesn't want to admit it
-is gay
The thing I like most about this series is the way it works hard to not morally condemn people.
IWGP最高!
OMG now I have to watch the special!
L'oiseau Bleu
This is an artsy kind of series. It has great imagery, quality acting, and an appealing story.
I am a *little* freaked out by the implications of the final pairing, even though I remember calculating while reading Thorn Birds that Ralph and Meggie are separated in age by 28 years (and he definitely did the surrogate father thing for her too) and I could still root for them.
Child Shiori's actress is wow so much better than adult Shiori's actress. I think adult Shiori was the best friend on Majo no Jouken. And aaah, apparently child Shiori grew up to be Chie on Stand Up!
This series really shows off Toyokawa Etsushi's acting. It's just a great series.
Which I uploaded to crunchyroll. No need to thank me, really.
Suekko Chounan Ane Sannin
I really enjoyed this series, as I said before. That is, until the last episode.
The ending for the main couple really pissed me off. Its lesson was that a woman's focus should be on housework and her responsibilities to her husband's family, even over being with and supporting her husband himself, much less focusing on her own life and career. I just. I REALLY wanted Haru-chan to go to Sapporo and get a job in the radio station there. And be adorable with poor lonely Okada Junichi and finally have lots of sex with him without any interruptions. So that kind of ruined the drama for me. ::rewrites ending in head:: But I loved Sachiko's happy ending. Heeee.
I was going to upload this to crunchyroll, but now with that ending, I think I'll upload Love Story or Concerto instead.
Go!
Kubozuka awesomeness! God, this was GREAT. I loooooove him. Objectively speaking it was a good movie too. Kubozuka was a Korean-Japanese person, and Orange Days girl was his Japanese girl love interest. He kept saying it was his love story in the voiceover, but it was more the story of him learning to love and accept himself. While being hot. He's not pretty at all, but his emoting power is so *hot*. He's Heathcliff-like in the intensity of the emotions he conveys onscreen.
This is on crunchyroll if you search for Kubozuka.
Romeo and Juliet
This special was laughably bad. The actors playing the parents really tried, but God they couldn't help. I actually was annoyed at all the parent drama because it unfocused the plot. Juri was just standing in the background during the climax. The script was the main problem, and it was a BIG ONE. But Takki and Juri's lack of acting ability or chemistry didn't nothing to help. Randomly, the day after watching this I saw Juri's actress advertising something on a train poster. Oh, she's in Yamapi's new drama too. Why?? She was so cutesy and annoying in this--totally not like the mature woman Juliet is supposed to turn into. Takki's self-consciousness in acting is so different from KimuTaku, who always looks totally natural in his gestures, always speaking with his mouth full and scratching his face or whatever during the scene. Takki looks like he's being really careful to follow directions exactly--he's not confident. When he had the big emotional scene in the church he did pretty well, actually, and you could tell he'd practiced that. But for just the normal scenes where he has no big purpose to fulfill he stands there and says his lines like he's not in the room. At least he's not as whiny as in Majo no Jouken--but God I almost like that Takki better. He was at least convincing as a petulant teen!
Takki has the same self-consciousness on variety shows and stuff too.
Watching Takki and Tsubasa on Domoto Kyoudai just makes me really appreciate the Domoto kyoudai, Tsuyoshi in particular. I first saw him in Summer Snow, and it's strange to come at this fandom from the drama angle, the opposite direction from like, the rest of the world, and realize that these actors have this whole other identity and life as JE boys.
Tsuyoshi seems like someone who would make a great leader. He gets along with everyone, is charismatic, more of a people person, and seems secure with his identity and his place in the world. He smoothes interactions between people and facilitates group harmony while not being afraid to say what he thinks.
And because of his charisma he can make people go along with his opinions. The thing I like best about him is how he appears unfazed by life. That security is appealing. At least, this is my impression of him from this short viewing.
T&T were talking a little about how the Domoto kyoudai were their senpai and stuff. And I think it's adorable how Takki is now senpai to all the new crop. Like Yamapi talking about how Takki is like both a mom and a dad to him, how everyone went to Takki's house all the time and put up pictures of their families. Cute.
But I just don't *like* Takki, or Tsubasa. They don't seem comfortable with each other either. They don't seem to really like each other. I mean, Takki flirts, but you can't really take that as a sign of close affection with JE boys. They seem like friendly coworkers and that's it. Which is not really what JE aims for when it pays all these boys to be friends with each other. Looking at how awkward T&T were with their forced hug compared to the crazy monkey hugging antics of the Domoto boys just makes it that much more obvious.
Of *course* Takki and Tsubasa are *great* performers, singers, and dancers, and that's the main part of being a good JE boy. That and being pretty, which they also are.
Taiyou no Kisetsu
Takki's blank-faced acting style actually works really well here, because his character is hiding his true emotions behind a MASK, and being mysterious and ENIGMATIC. He should play the creepy villain more often. To me he seems *much* easier to be creeped out by than to sympathize with, no matter how pretty he is.
But I do have to give him credit--he won best actor for this and I can see why. My away message while watching this was frequently, "It *looks* like Takki, but it's acting..."
This reminded me of Sora kara Furu Ichi Oku no Hoshi for obvious reasons--of course Sora kara is much better, but this series is still very compelling and has the added spice of revenge plot! Sora kara really had no overarching driving motivation on KimuTaku's part.
I enjoy the direction in this. Very pretty with nice symbolism.
Also the ending credits are beautiful! They make Takki look artsy and hot! It's kinda funny how beefcake it gets though. Especially with skinny Takki. (Oh yeah, open your shirt more! Let's see how many ribs we can count!)
The end of this series--I don't know, it didn't quite give the punch I wanted. I'd rather she die in his arms in front of everyone. As it happened no one knows why he's screaming her name and collapsing like a crazy person, so there's not that rush of realization by everyone that I'd like. And so after she dies he just--goes off somewhere? WTF? Yay?
I still feel SO BAD for Shinji. He's such a good guy and all these bad things keep happening to him. At least he has that boyfriend there who's like totally obsessed with him.
Kanojo to no Tadashii Asobikata
This was a solid and enjoyable special. I liked the "game" the boy and girl played because 1. being a secret princess from a foreign land with a secret retainer is totally the kind of game I would have played when I was young and 2. how awesome would it be to play that game in high school?! Secret lives are hot!
Also I want a manslave. ::snaps fingers::
The only thing I wished they had added into the climax was a line of dialogue about how *long* they had been playing the game, so their classmates could be even more WTF.
I don't know why but this kind of inspired me to rewatch the BBC's Taming of the Shrew with Rufus Sewell (God I fucking love that movie. It's almost everything I love about the English.)
Sore wa Totsuzen Arashi no You ni
Yamapi vehicle. It seems like since Kimi wa Petto (or maybe it was Takki who pioneered with Majo no Jouken or even KimuTaku with Long Vacation), every up-and-coming JE boy has to star in a older-woman-younger-man drama for his first leading role. The main problem with this drama was that I couldn't sympathize with the older woman. And that's the BIG THING that as a female viewer I'm supposed to do.
I'm sure many housewives want to have the fantasy of having sex with Yamapi, but not the fantasy starring this housewife. Judging from the comments on crunchyroll other people feel the same way. She has such a nice husband and nice family and nice life. I could buy her being dissatisfied with her life if they just showed me a *reason*, but her dissatisfaction seems so vague and wishywashy. "Oh, I should be more feminist, but I like housework..." "Oh, I love my husband but Yamapi needs someone to take care of him..." I just don't like her at all. And the chemistry between them is somewhat lacking.
Yamapi's screen presence was still kind of dim. (I really think it does take him until Nobuta to get going--maybe it was having Kame nearby to grope and improvise with that made the difference.) Also his posture alone when he dances would NEVER convince me he was a prize-winning ballroom dancer, but since his problem is in his lungs, I can explain it away that he unconsciously hunches to protect himself from the pain.
SARS has only released the first 4 episodes, and I am interested in seeing how this turns out, so the impatience to keep watching is a sign that they're doing something right at least. Maybe I just want to see all the dramatic irony revealed.
Eternal Summer
Yay ambiguously gay Taiwanese movies! This reminded me a lot of Nagisa no Shindobaddo, with the plot of the gay guy who loves his best friend who loves a girl who sympathizes with the gay guy, but the three characters in this were in high school and college, so there was actual sex.
I really liked this. The ending was so ambiguous and left a lot of stuff unexplained. I don't know how all three of them are going to be happy, but it was such an interesting exploration of their relationships.
And this is on crunchyroll too! I came across it totally by random. I love crunchyroll.
Concerto
I loved this series. The relationships between the characters, the way they related to each other onscreen seemed more realistic than in many other dramas.
I hear a lot about how Tamura Masakazu is such a good actor, but I didn't really see it in this series. The way his eyebrows were constantly moving up and down and in and out was very annoying to me. And his stuttering didn't really seem like a valid dialogue technique to me. He did convince me that he loved Kakeru and Hana and his work however.
KimuTaku played his usual ubercharacter, but what made this role different was that the character that in other dramas is so masterful and uncompromising here does submit to one person and one person only--Kousuke.
This drama is at heart a love triangle. But what makes this love triangle interesting is the relationship between Kakeru and Kousuke. The number of parallels that kept being alluded to between young Kousuke and current Kakeru result in a curious doubling effect. So it's easier to believe that Hana would love them both equally when they seem like almost the same person. Add to the competition and betrayal over Hana the push and pull of Kakeru and Kousuke's mentor/student and industry rival relationships and it gets very complex emotionally.
Threesome Evidence:
-Hana says she loves them 50/50--of course she wants them both, who wouldn't!
-The men are accustomed to talking about their difficult emotions with each other, sometimes to a painful degree. But they're very open with each other.
-I don't get a gay vibe from the two men at all, not even between each other. They seem to have a very loving and competitive mentor/student relationship. But if either of them were ever *going* to have sex wtih a man, it would have to be each other. And I could certainly be convinced that their relationship could develop sexually, not just sharing Hana and work, as the ending implied. Because Kakeru still has *so much* hero worship for "Ebisawa Kousuke," and Kousuke loves his younger self through Kakeru.
-The opening credits have all three of them sharing a bathroom with like 3 toothbrushes in a cup together and stuff.
-A concerto is a piece of music with three parts.
The ending IMPLIES a relationship where Hana can be married to both Kakeru and Kousuke while Kakeru and Kousuke work together and live next door to each other, but it doesn't say it. I really like the film "Design for Living" and the ending kind of reminded me of it. (I don't think they'll go for no sex though.)
They're so coy about it, they just *hint*, they don't *give* us a conclusion to the story. It's an unsatisfying ending, but still good in that it leaves the door open for the ending the viewer wants. Kind of a little copout, but I enjoy it.
Bishounen
GOD SO PRETTY.
This movie consistently failed to explain/convince me of characters' motivations, so I couldn't really follow the movie emotionally.
But you know what I could follow? All the hawt boys having sex. YIS.
Yay unambiguously gay Hong Kong movies!
Love Story
Hurrah for dysfunctional people unable to open up and have normal relationships! I really like Toyokawa Etsushi (from Aishiteiru and L'oiseau)--his character here is hilariously abrupt and rude and excruciatingly honest. The boss-editor compares him to a cat who just gave birth, moody and easily triggered to anger and hurt. Hee! I also like how because he was so pissy everyone thought he was gay and he had to emphatically correct them. Haaaaahahaha. Oh, eccentric hermit writers... I like the love interest (from Sapuri) too because she's so socially frigid and earnest and bad at relationships.
And their relationship together is appealing, the way they keep alternatively insulting each other and opening up to each other. They're so neurotic yay.
But apart from the two main characters, all the others fail to catch my interest and annoy me when they take up screen time. Even Katori Shingo. (I'm sorry but I can't take Shingo Mama seriously ever.)
When the main woman discovers woman's shoes in her boyfriend's apartment, she tries to imagine a situation in which he doesn't have another woman. And her friends come up with transvestite hahahha, and she and other characters say it like its totally normal, not threatening the boyfriend's masculinity or appeal.
Well in Japanese it is termed a "hobby" not a "fetish" so maybe that has something to do with it. Later on, she tells the boyfriend that the only reason she rejected that theory is because the shoes were too small to fit his feet. Oh, Japan.
The subtitles by pikawoo in this frequently have some EXTREMELY DUBIOUS moments, but luckily I could tell what the characters were actually saying for the most part. It makes me feel bad for people who couldn't, though, because there were parts when they'd be really confused because the subs are saying the exact opposite of what the characters are actually saying. They were softsubs, but I'm not sure of the etiquette of changing them, and besides I'm lazy. Now I wonder how much of my sometime confusion when watching Korean dramas is due to bad translations (since there I can't tell more than a few words).
This is another Kitagawa Eriko show, and Etsushi is cast again in her work, like KimuTaku was cast more than once in her work. I like the two types of men that the characters Etsushi and Kimutaku often play represent, so it's good to find a showcase for them.
Nemureru Mori (spoilers that will impede your watching enjoyment)
I literally could not stop watching this. Great suspense, and a great KimuTaku character.
There are parallels to Sora kara Furu vaguely in basic plot elements, but Sora kara is better I think. I'm getting kind of tired of lost memories as a plot device to create suspense though. Seriously it seems like half the dramas use it.
This drama keeps you guessing, but some plot twists don't really hold up after the big reveal.
After his big speech to Keita who was about to commit suicide about living on and stuff the show failed to convince me that KimuTaku was capable of the double suicide he apparently chose at the end. I wish they had explained their motivations for that more clearly.
And Kokubu! WTF is up with that "hell" you've cooked up for the real killer. Haven't you ever heard of living well as the best revenge?! Your poor wife is waiting for you, but all you can think about is repeatedly stabbing now-insane killer in non-vital spots whenever you get out on parole (like that will happen!).
And I guess the mother was just a delusion on the part of both father and son? Quite bizarre.
The poor fathers in this--one with a criminally insane son locked in a madhouse, the other with his two children committing double suicide for no real apparent reason--I guess they wanted to "be together" not as siblings? I'm not really sure...
I think it would have been a much better ending if after KimuTaku said it was just a bad dream, she forgot everything again and they hypnotised her to have a happy new life somewhere, and KimuTaku continued his hidden watching over her (for the next fifteen years I guess).
Long Love Letter
Kubozuka is a teacher! In a suit! Yaaay!
Hahaha, in like his first *scene* he kisses one of his boy students. God I love him.
His lady teacher love interest was the girl from Beautiful Life and Aishiteiru to Itte Kure. It was kind of strange to see her paired with Kubozuka because in those other dramas her men were older than Kubozuka, so in my mind she seems older than she is, because of her former company. Kubozuka and she shared a touching, convincing love, but I wish they'd been able to have more of a *romance*. Or like, physical contact.
This series was so DEPRESSING. It put the characters through hardship to bring out the best in them and made them all heroes and made me love them and then kept defeating and killing them again and again and again. But it was still a good series, just for how much I loved them and was invested in their survival and their love for each other.
The ending was indeed Hard To Understand.
Judging by the after-the-credits scene, the chemical cloud and war still happened (because the land was just rolling hills with no buildings--I doubt the future changed so much that everyone *voluntarily* tore down buildings and planted fields in Yokohama), but the fact that the land became green probably just meant that the kids used the fresh water brought by the earthquake to plant the land, and our little group became the seeds of humanity. (OMG have lots of babies!) So the only change the letters brought about was probably that Kubozuka and the lady teacher were together for a year before the school got transported. Of course many things after that could have been changed butterfly-effect style, so we don't know if the same people got transported or what happened after they were. I hope the same people got transported--except the annoying Yamapi-stalking teacher--but that this time they survived somehow (because of the *magic power* of Kubozuka and the lady teacher's now-stronger love). Geez time travel makes my brain hurt.
What seemed to cause some viewers some confusion was Kubozuka's vision right before they sent the letters back in time. It's a dream of what he wants to happen I think, just like his earlier vision of him meeting the lady teacher for the first time as her assistant teacher. Of course there's still the issue of sushi boy's vision of lady teacher after she died in the future. I don't even know. It seems with the people in the past hearing the voices from the future that not only our two narratives but also the two timelines themselves are linked by the unstable time-space hole thingy and are moving in parallel. So if we wave our hands and squint I guess spirits can travel through the hole too? Well, whatever. I didn't really care that much about sushi boy, even though Orange Days boy did a good job with him.
I didn't quite understand what killed the surviving humans and left the crippled girl alive. I guess it was just long starvation and vitamin deficiency? And they gave her all their food? They seemed pretty lively just a few days before...
Yamapi was pretty good in this. Still no big screen presence, but I liked how he was scouting around for a mate and finally chose the crippled girl.
Wow this really got me feeling into environmentalism by personalizing it. Like I want to do anything I can to stop all these bad things from happening to my people in the future. OMG save the planet!
Tiger and Dragon
glaphix was saying that this was a series that plays to Okada and Nagase's strengths. After watching only the first episode I think I have to agree. Nagase is able to do his bizarre overacting and facial acrobatics combined with sudden shifts into super cool mode. (I don't think I'll ever like any Nagase character better than IWGP's Makoto, but he was entertaining enough here, with his roving yakuza tongue.) Nagase seems to have made a career out of playing the low-class guy in a position where he doesn't fit in. Okada is good at being self-effacing and loving. ::squishes him::
Also in the first episode he was half-naked. I appreciate these things! Pretty tattoo on his man-booby... (A tattoo from Sapuri/Love Story/Nemureru Mori girl, randomly enough.)
Nagase's childhood angst was kind of randomly shoved in there--bad exposition. I don't really care about any of the characters, or really like them. The amount of stupid people who borrow money from yakuza is astounding.
I like the interesting format though. Each episode kind of applies a rakugo story to what's happening in the character's lives.
Romance
Wow I really will watch anything with the plot of a female teacher falling in love with a male student.
This was pure melodrama, but quite enjoyable. Koreans sure do cry and scream a lot and this drama is no exception.
But this isn't just any crap--the first half is very entertaining. It really gives the emo porn payoff when our hero just keeps doing his best no matter how much injustice is piled upon him, and when our heroine *realizes* she's been unfair to him. The latter half kind of slows down, but it's still watchable. The way the main villain can't act at all, and his sudden transformation in the latter half into a real moustache-twirling villain (and then sudden redemption) hampers the story. But the main couple is ADORABLE. I don't think I've seen an older woman/younger man couple where *both* parties are so *adorable* before. And when they're together and happy it's like the cutest thing ever, like puppies and rainbows. How could anyone be opposed to them? How can anyone withstand the power of their cuteness rays? I do wish they at least kissed more, but they're so virginal, it's kind of ridiculous. Other characters get to have sex. There are internal constraints and complications that prevent our main couple from feeling free to engage in physical demonstrations of affection for a good amount of time, though, I understand that.
Korean teachers bully their students to a disgraceful degree. Not just here, but in all the depictions of Korean schools I've seen. Jesus. There was even a scene where the female teacher beat the male student's ass with a rod for disobeying her. Kinky...
The male student kind of reminds me of Kame in Tatta Hitotsu no Koi, in that he works hard to scrape money together to keep his family together, acting as a surrogate parent to his younger brother.
I was wondering if the teacher/student, older woman/younger man thing is a kind of modern version of courtly love. I like it because of power dynamics. But lots of other people who are different from me like it too. So maybe what they're tuning into, besides the taboo, is the elevation of the woman. The younger man loves her from afar, so purely, sacrificing himself on the altar of their love. (Look at Kame's scratched and injured arms from working all night just to buy the woman a bottle of birth-year wine in Sapuri.) It's never depicted as a lust-based relationship. (Even though Senpai and Sensei's relationship in SOS is definitely carnal, his impassioned speech that "Humans are born to love and be loved" and insistence on proposing marriage makes it clear that Love, not lust is at work here.) He overcomes many hardships to preserve their love. (Look at Jin out in the Mongolian winter almost dying in order to write his daily email to Anego. Look at Senpai purposely failing school for two years and sacrificing his future to be near to Sensei in SOS.) Older men have to worry about their careers and status and progeny, and use women as a tool to these ends, but to younger man as depicted in these stories, the woman he loves is his most important, number one priority. And because they're young, they have no sense of perspective, so they really are able to do anything for love. As in courtly love, the love of the woman is elevated to almost a religious veneration. Chretien de Troyes' Lancelot and Guinevere explicitly make Love into a sacrament. It's easiest to see echoes of this in Majo no Jouken, where Takki takes the painting The Creation of Adam and sketches a new version, substituting his own face for Adam and Nanako for God. These stories also frequently have elements of coming of age stories for the boys, love for the woman literally making men out of them. So I guess it's the exploration of the transformative and transcendent power of love that appeals in these stories.
Orange Days
Since she wrote so many of my favorites I decided to look at some of the other works of scriptwriter Kitagawa Eriko
This is basically a repeat of Aishiteiru to Itte Kure with the genders reversed. It was enjoyable enough to watch, but I think Aishiteiru was better done, and it was kind of annoying to see the same elements repeated in this one. I did really enjoy the world-traveling manwhore friend's subplot, though.
Ikebukuro West Gate Park
HELLA FUN.
Takashi King (Kubozuka) is like Senpai from SOS only MORE. I loff him.
His sexuality is so malleable and... effervescent.
I love Makoto (Nagase) too. He's so intellectually stupid (トラとウマ(笑<3)) but he's got such a strong inner character that everyone ends up turning to him almost unconsciously. Even his name means like "a true heart." I do wish we might have seen him just like destroy someone, since he was supposed to be this badass fighter (even a complete high school flashback would be good), but I'm happy he's left that lifestyle behind him.
I totally suspected who the killer was from the first ep.
This series is so gritty and funny and awesome. I love how perverted *everyone* is. Heee. It looks like a really fun place to live.
I'm sure there was more male-male kisses in this series than male-female kisses. Sooo much random fanservice. I wonder whose decision the gayness was, because often it was just random acts of gayness, not words. Writer, director, the actors themselves? Anyway it was GREAT.
I LOVED that the writers gave us Shou, the man who used to be a woman. And the show and characters were totally accepting of him and awesome.
The lack of smart female characters is kind of annoying... except for Chiaki I guess? But even she's stupid for love... And Kana is smart of course. But then they make Kana really skanky to turn people off. I think she's great though.
The series made women kind of hard to form the same bonds with that men formed with men because the women were all so ditzy. The men treat women sort of like pets you have sex with. And then the mom making onigiri for the battle because "This is the only thing women can do." ::rolls eyes::
Watanabe Ken suteeeekiiiiii!!! (Just like his character's nickname "Handsome"! God, his senpai love is so adorable.)
Why did Watanabe Ken have to resign? What was he taking responsibility for? The fact that there were no arrests? Oh, maybe what Makoto accused him of, of sitting back and letting Yamai and the crazy yakuza stir things up so that he could come in and crush both gangs when they started fighting.
Also I was confused about how we knew that little boy and girl. I don't remember them from before. Who stabbed the little boy? And why is Watanabe Ken's wife still in the hospital after a few years? Can't she live at home in a wheelchair, or go to an assisted care facility? It must be really boring for her to always be in the hospital bed. She could be the detective agency receptionist! (OMG when can I see the special?!)
Yamapi had like no screen presence. How the hell did he win best supporting actor for this?
Ballet in black leather pants is OBVIOUSLY the way to go to lead a street gang war. It's so clear to me now! I always felt that ballet boy's motivations needed more explanation though. I mean he's so bizarre. Maybe there is no rational explanation, only his strange desire to carve out his own country.
With good shows I always write fics in my head. Sometimes I have to pause the video because the real show is distracting me from the show in my head. Like right now the fic in my head is about how Watanabe Ken finds Makoto after he leaves the battleground. (No, I don't slash them.)
But the thing with this show is that the stuff I imagine comes *true*.
Like: "Oh, haha, wouldn't it be funny if two policemen randomly kissed here? ...OH MY GOD."
Haha, the policemen's porn reading/masturbation in the hospital gives お見舞い a whole new meaning. ::squints at kanji:: Wow, that almost... works.
If the drama was like this, I can only imagine how risque the manga is.
Evidence of Takashi/Makoto Pure Love:
-Takashi comes onto Makoto in the onsen in the FIRST EPISODE. No, like, canonically. You cannot convince me that that's not what the actors were playing right then. And just to drive the point home, the two times they're together in the bath, the director pans past these two other older guys sitting very close with their arms around each other.
-Quote from Wikipedia:"In the TV version, Takashi has a girlfriend named Jessie, but in the manga he is single and appears/rumoured to be gay."
-Makoto sees Takashi saying "aishiteruyo" to his gf and is disgusted and leaves. (I thought it was adorable though.)
-But then later on when his girlfriend really needs Takashi, Takashi totally ignores her.
-Takashi wants Makoto to join his gang because he wants to own Makoto's body and loyalty. He wants an expression of commitment. Makoto's l33t fighting skillz would be useful to his gang. (And also there's the sexing up he maybe wants to do.)
-But when Makoto insists on being opposed to gangs in general, Takashi gives up his throne and DISBANDS THE G-BOYS for Makoto. And kisses him in front of his gang. Because it's JUST THAT OBVIOUS what the deepest relationship, the real love story on this show is.
So, uh, I want MORE.
WHERE are all the Takashi/Makoto fics?!? Seriously, point me to them.
But if we can't have Takashi/Makoto...
Makoto should have stayed with Kana. They were hot together and I really liked her. And sex with her is the only time he wasn't impotent (with women). (HAHA his impotency is *hilarious*.) I don't understand why he dumped her... I don't even think he *did* dump her, but somehow they were both talking about how they were saying goodbye.
I think he dumped her because he probably either:
-is scared by sex
-feels guilt for Hikaru
-needs to be dominated but is scared of that and doesn't want to admit it
-is gay
The thing I like most about this series is the way it works hard to not morally condemn people.
IWGP最高!
OMG now I have to watch the special!
L'oiseau Bleu
This is an artsy kind of series. It has great imagery, quality acting, and an appealing story.
I am a *little* freaked out by the implications of the final pairing, even though I remember calculating while reading Thorn Birds that Ralph and Meggie are separated in age by 28 years (and he definitely did the surrogate father thing for her too) and I could still root for them.
Child Shiori's actress is wow so much better than adult Shiori's actress. I think adult Shiori was the best friend on Majo no Jouken. And aaah, apparently child Shiori grew up to be Chie on Stand Up!
This series really shows off Toyokawa Etsushi's acting. It's just a great series.
Which I uploaded to crunchyroll. No need to thank me, really.
Suekko Chounan Ane Sannin
I really enjoyed this series, as I said before. That is, until the last episode.
The ending for the main couple really pissed me off. Its lesson was that a woman's focus should be on housework and her responsibilities to her husband's family, even over being with and supporting her husband himself, much less focusing on her own life and career. I just. I REALLY wanted Haru-chan to go to Sapporo and get a job in the radio station there. And be adorable with poor lonely Okada Junichi and finally have lots of sex with him without any interruptions. So that kind of ruined the drama for me. ::rewrites ending in head:: But I loved Sachiko's happy ending. Heeee.
I was going to upload this to crunchyroll, but now with that ending, I think I'll upload Love Story or Concerto instead.
Go!
Kubozuka awesomeness! God, this was GREAT. I loooooove him. Objectively speaking it was a good movie too. Kubozuka was a Korean-Japanese person, and Orange Days girl was his Japanese girl love interest. He kept saying it was his love story in the voiceover, but it was more the story of him learning to love and accept himself. While being hot. He's not pretty at all, but his emoting power is so *hot*. He's Heathcliff-like in the intensity of the emotions he conveys onscreen.
This is on crunchyroll if you search for Kubozuka.
Romeo and Juliet
This special was laughably bad. The actors playing the parents really tried, but God they couldn't help. I actually was annoyed at all the parent drama because it unfocused the plot. Juri was just standing in the background during the climax. The script was the main problem, and it was a BIG ONE. But Takki and Juri's lack of acting ability or chemistry didn't nothing to help. Randomly, the day after watching this I saw Juri's actress advertising something on a train poster. Oh, she's in Yamapi's new drama too. Why?? She was so cutesy and annoying in this--totally not like the mature woman Juliet is supposed to turn into. Takki's self-consciousness in acting is so different from KimuTaku, who always looks totally natural in his gestures, always speaking with his mouth full and scratching his face or whatever during the scene. Takki looks like he's being really careful to follow directions exactly--he's not confident. When he had the big emotional scene in the church he did pretty well, actually, and you could tell he'd practiced that. But for just the normal scenes where he has no big purpose to fulfill he stands there and says his lines like he's not in the room. At least he's not as whiny as in Majo no Jouken--but God I almost like that Takki better. He was at least convincing as a petulant teen!
Takki has the same self-consciousness on variety shows and stuff too.
Watching Takki and Tsubasa on Domoto Kyoudai just makes me really appreciate the Domoto kyoudai, Tsuyoshi in particular. I first saw him in Summer Snow, and it's strange to come at this fandom from the drama angle, the opposite direction from like, the rest of the world, and realize that these actors have this whole other identity and life as JE boys.
Tsuyoshi seems like someone who would make a great leader. He gets along with everyone, is charismatic, more of a people person, and seems secure with his identity and his place in the world. He smoothes interactions between people and facilitates group harmony while not being afraid to say what he thinks.
And because of his charisma he can make people go along with his opinions. The thing I like best about him is how he appears unfazed by life. That security is appealing. At least, this is my impression of him from this short viewing.
T&T were talking a little about how the Domoto kyoudai were their senpai and stuff. And I think it's adorable how Takki is now senpai to all the new crop. Like Yamapi talking about how Takki is like both a mom and a dad to him, how everyone went to Takki's house all the time and put up pictures of their families. Cute.
But I just don't *like* Takki, or Tsubasa. They don't seem comfortable with each other either. They don't seem to really like each other. I mean, Takki flirts, but you can't really take that as a sign of close affection with JE boys. They seem like friendly coworkers and that's it. Which is not really what JE aims for when it pays all these boys to be friends with each other. Looking at how awkward T&T were with their forced hug compared to the crazy monkey hugging antics of the Domoto boys just makes it that much more obvious.
Of *course* Takki and Tsubasa are *great* performers, singers, and dancers, and that's the main part of being a good JE boy. That and being pretty, which they also are.
Taiyou no Kisetsu
Takki's blank-faced acting style actually works really well here, because his character is hiding his true emotions behind a MASK, and being mysterious and ENIGMATIC. He should play the creepy villain more often. To me he seems *much* easier to be creeped out by than to sympathize with, no matter how pretty he is.
But I do have to give him credit--he won best actor for this and I can see why. My away message while watching this was frequently, "It *looks* like Takki, but it's acting..."
This reminded me of Sora kara Furu Ichi Oku no Hoshi for obvious reasons--of course Sora kara is much better, but this series is still very compelling and has the added spice of revenge plot! Sora kara really had no overarching driving motivation on KimuTaku's part.
I enjoy the direction in this. Very pretty with nice symbolism.
Also the ending credits are beautiful! They make Takki look artsy and hot! It's kinda funny how beefcake it gets though. Especially with skinny Takki. (Oh yeah, open your shirt more! Let's see how many ribs we can count!)
The end of this series--I don't know, it didn't quite give the punch I wanted. I'd rather she die in his arms in front of everyone. As it happened no one knows why he's screaming her name and collapsing like a crazy person, so there's not that rush of realization by everyone that I'd like. And so after she dies he just--goes off somewhere? WTF? Yay?
I still feel SO BAD for Shinji. He's such a good guy and all these bad things keep happening to him. At least he has that boyfriend there who's like totally obsessed with him.
Kanojo to no Tadashii Asobikata
This was a solid and enjoyable special. I liked the "game" the boy and girl played because 1. being a secret princess from a foreign land with a secret retainer is totally the kind of game I would have played when I was young and 2. how awesome would it be to play that game in high school?! Secret lives are hot!
Also I want a manslave. ::snaps fingers::
The only thing I wished they had added into the climax was a line of dialogue about how *long* they had been playing the game, so their classmates could be even more WTF.
I don't know why but this kind of inspired me to rewatch the BBC's Taming of the Shrew with Rufus Sewell (God I fucking love that movie. It's almost everything I love about the English.)
Sore wa Totsuzen Arashi no You ni
Yamapi vehicle. It seems like since Kimi wa Petto (or maybe it was Takki who pioneered with Majo no Jouken or even KimuTaku with Long Vacation), every up-and-coming JE boy has to star in a older-woman-younger-man drama for his first leading role. The main problem with this drama was that I couldn't sympathize with the older woman. And that's the BIG THING that as a female viewer I'm supposed to do.
I'm sure many housewives want to have the fantasy of having sex with Yamapi, but not the fantasy starring this housewife. Judging from the comments on crunchyroll other people feel the same way. She has such a nice husband and nice family and nice life. I could buy her being dissatisfied with her life if they just showed me a *reason*, but her dissatisfaction seems so vague and wishywashy. "Oh, I should be more feminist, but I like housework..." "Oh, I love my husband but Yamapi needs someone to take care of him..." I just don't like her at all. And the chemistry between them is somewhat lacking.
Yamapi's screen presence was still kind of dim. (I really think it does take him until Nobuta to get going--maybe it was having Kame nearby to grope and improvise with that made the difference.) Also his posture alone when he dances would NEVER convince me he was a prize-winning ballroom dancer, but since his problem is in his lungs, I can explain it away that he unconsciously hunches to protect himself from the pain.
SARS has only released the first 4 episodes, and I am interested in seeing how this turns out, so the impatience to keep watching is a sign that they're doing something right at least. Maybe I just want to see all the dramatic irony revealed.
Eternal Summer
Yay ambiguously gay Taiwanese movies! This reminded me a lot of Nagisa no Shindobaddo, with the plot of the gay guy who loves his best friend who loves a girl who sympathizes with the gay guy, but the three characters in this were in high school and college, so there was actual sex.
I really liked this. The ending was so ambiguous and left a lot of stuff unexplained. I don't know how all three of them are going to be happy, but it was such an interesting exploration of their relationships.
And this is on crunchyroll too! I came across it totally by random. I love crunchyroll.
Concerto
I loved this series. The relationships between the characters, the way they related to each other onscreen seemed more realistic than in many other dramas.
I hear a lot about how Tamura Masakazu is such a good actor, but I didn't really see it in this series. The way his eyebrows were constantly moving up and down and in and out was very annoying to me. And his stuttering didn't really seem like a valid dialogue technique to me. He did convince me that he loved Kakeru and Hana and his work however.
KimuTaku played his usual ubercharacter, but what made this role different was that the character that in other dramas is so masterful and uncompromising here does submit to one person and one person only--Kousuke.
This drama is at heart a love triangle. But what makes this love triangle interesting is the relationship between Kakeru and Kousuke. The number of parallels that kept being alluded to between young Kousuke and current Kakeru result in a curious doubling effect. So it's easier to believe that Hana would love them both equally when they seem like almost the same person. Add to the competition and betrayal over Hana the push and pull of Kakeru and Kousuke's mentor/student and industry rival relationships and it gets very complex emotionally.
Threesome Evidence:
-Hana says she loves them 50/50--of course she wants them both, who wouldn't!
-The men are accustomed to talking about their difficult emotions with each other, sometimes to a painful degree. But they're very open with each other.
-I don't get a gay vibe from the two men at all, not even between each other. They seem to have a very loving and competitive mentor/student relationship. But if either of them were ever *going* to have sex wtih a man, it would have to be each other. And I could certainly be convinced that their relationship could develop sexually, not just sharing Hana and work, as the ending implied. Because Kakeru still has *so much* hero worship for "Ebisawa Kousuke," and Kousuke loves his younger self through Kakeru.
-The opening credits have all three of them sharing a bathroom with like 3 toothbrushes in a cup together and stuff.
-A concerto is a piece of music with three parts.
The ending IMPLIES a relationship where Hana can be married to both Kakeru and Kousuke while Kakeru and Kousuke work together and live next door to each other, but it doesn't say it. I really like the film "Design for Living" and the ending kind of reminded me of it. (I don't think they'll go for no sex though.)
They're so coy about it, they just *hint*, they don't *give* us a conclusion to the story. It's an unsatisfying ending, but still good in that it leaves the door open for the ending the viewer wants. Kind of a little copout, but I enjoy it.
Bishounen
GOD SO PRETTY.
This movie consistently failed to explain/convince me of characters' motivations, so I couldn't really follow the movie emotionally.
But you know what I could follow? All the hawt boys having sex. YIS.
Yay unambiguously gay Hong Kong movies!
Love Story
Hurrah for dysfunctional people unable to open up and have normal relationships! I really like Toyokawa Etsushi (from Aishiteiru and L'oiseau)--his character here is hilariously abrupt and rude and excruciatingly honest. The boss-editor compares him to a cat who just gave birth, moody and easily triggered to anger and hurt. Hee! I also like how because he was so pissy everyone thought he was gay and he had to emphatically correct them. Haaaaahahaha. Oh, eccentric hermit writers... I like the love interest (from Sapuri) too because she's so socially frigid and earnest and bad at relationships.
And their relationship together is appealing, the way they keep alternatively insulting each other and opening up to each other. They're so neurotic yay.
But apart from the two main characters, all the others fail to catch my interest and annoy me when they take up screen time. Even Katori Shingo. (I'm sorry but I can't take Shingo Mama seriously ever.)
When the main woman discovers woman's shoes in her boyfriend's apartment, she tries to imagine a situation in which he doesn't have another woman. And her friends come up with transvestite hahahha, and she and other characters say it like its totally normal, not threatening the boyfriend's masculinity or appeal.
Well in Japanese it is termed a "hobby" not a "fetish" so maybe that has something to do with it. Later on, she tells the boyfriend that the only reason she rejected that theory is because the shoes were too small to fit his feet. Oh, Japan.
The subtitles by pikawoo in this frequently have some EXTREMELY DUBIOUS moments, but luckily I could tell what the characters were actually saying for the most part. It makes me feel bad for people who couldn't, though, because there were parts when they'd be really confused because the subs are saying the exact opposite of what the characters are actually saying. They were softsubs, but I'm not sure of the etiquette of changing them, and besides I'm lazy. Now I wonder how much of my sometime confusion when watching Korean dramas is due to bad translations (since there I can't tell more than a few words).
This is another Kitagawa Eriko show, and Etsushi is cast again in her work, like KimuTaku was cast more than once in her work. I like the two types of men that the characters Etsushi and Kimutaku often play represent, so it's good to find a showcase for them.
Nemureru Mori (spoilers that will impede your watching enjoyment)
I literally could not stop watching this. Great suspense, and a great KimuTaku character.
There are parallels to Sora kara Furu vaguely in basic plot elements, but Sora kara is better I think. I'm getting kind of tired of lost memories as a plot device to create suspense though. Seriously it seems like half the dramas use it.
This drama keeps you guessing, but some plot twists don't really hold up after the big reveal.
After his big speech to Keita who was about to commit suicide about living on and stuff the show failed to convince me that KimuTaku was capable of the double suicide he apparently chose at the end. I wish they had explained their motivations for that more clearly.
And Kokubu! WTF is up with that "hell" you've cooked up for the real killer. Haven't you ever heard of living well as the best revenge?! Your poor wife is waiting for you, but all you can think about is repeatedly stabbing now-insane killer in non-vital spots whenever you get out on parole (like that will happen!).
And I guess the mother was just a delusion on the part of both father and son? Quite bizarre.
The poor fathers in this--one with a criminally insane son locked in a madhouse, the other with his two children committing double suicide for no real apparent reason--I guess they wanted to "be together" not as siblings? I'm not really sure...
I think it would have been a much better ending if after KimuTaku said it was just a bad dream, she forgot everything again and they hypnotised her to have a happy new life somewhere, and KimuTaku continued his hidden watching over her (for the next fifteen years I guess).
Long Love Letter
Kubozuka is a teacher! In a suit! Yaaay!
Hahaha, in like his first *scene* he kisses one of his boy students. God I love him.
His lady teacher love interest was the girl from Beautiful Life and Aishiteiru to Itte Kure. It was kind of strange to see her paired with Kubozuka because in those other dramas her men were older than Kubozuka, so in my mind she seems older than she is, because of her former company. Kubozuka and she shared a touching, convincing love, but I wish they'd been able to have more of a *romance*. Or like, physical contact.
This series was so DEPRESSING. It put the characters through hardship to bring out the best in them and made them all heroes and made me love them and then kept defeating and killing them again and again and again. But it was still a good series, just for how much I loved them and was invested in their survival and their love for each other.
The ending was indeed Hard To Understand.
Judging by the after-the-credits scene, the chemical cloud and war still happened (because the land was just rolling hills with no buildings--I doubt the future changed so much that everyone *voluntarily* tore down buildings and planted fields in Yokohama), but the fact that the land became green probably just meant that the kids used the fresh water brought by the earthquake to plant the land, and our little group became the seeds of humanity. (OMG have lots of babies!) So the only change the letters brought about was probably that Kubozuka and the lady teacher were together for a year before the school got transported. Of course many things after that could have been changed butterfly-effect style, so we don't know if the same people got transported or what happened after they were. I hope the same people got transported--except the annoying Yamapi-stalking teacher--but that this time they survived somehow (because of the *magic power* of Kubozuka and the lady teacher's now-stronger love). Geez time travel makes my brain hurt.
What seemed to cause some viewers some confusion was Kubozuka's vision right before they sent the letters back in time. It's a dream of what he wants to happen I think, just like his earlier vision of him meeting the lady teacher for the first time as her assistant teacher. Of course there's still the issue of sushi boy's vision of lady teacher after she died in the future. I don't even know. It seems with the people in the past hearing the voices from the future that not only our two narratives but also the two timelines themselves are linked by the unstable time-space hole thingy and are moving in parallel. So if we wave our hands and squint I guess spirits can travel through the hole too? Well, whatever. I didn't really care that much about sushi boy, even though Orange Days boy did a good job with him.
I didn't quite understand what killed the surviving humans and left the crippled girl alive. I guess it was just long starvation and vitamin deficiency? And they gave her all their food? They seemed pretty lively just a few days before...
Yamapi was pretty good in this. Still no big screen presence, but I liked how he was scouting around for a mate and finally chose the crippled girl.
Wow this really got me feeling into environmentalism by personalizing it. Like I want to do anything I can to stop all these bad things from happening to my people in the future. OMG save the planet!
Tiger and Dragon
glaphix was saying that this was a series that plays to Okada and Nagase's strengths. After watching only the first episode I think I have to agree. Nagase is able to do his bizarre overacting and facial acrobatics combined with sudden shifts into super cool mode. (I don't think I'll ever like any Nagase character better than IWGP's Makoto, but he was entertaining enough here, with his roving yakuza tongue.) Nagase seems to have made a career out of playing the low-class guy in a position where he doesn't fit in. Okada is good at being self-effacing and loving. ::squishes him::
Also in the first episode he was half-naked. I appreciate these things! Pretty tattoo on his man-booby... (A tattoo from Sapuri/Love Story/Nemureru Mori girl, randomly enough.)
Nagase's childhood angst was kind of randomly shoved in there--bad exposition. I don't really care about any of the characters, or really like them. The amount of stupid people who borrow money from yakuza is astounding.
I like the interesting format though. Each episode kind of applies a rakugo story to what's happening in the character's lives.
Romance
Wow I really will watch anything with the plot of a female teacher falling in love with a male student.
This was pure melodrama, but quite enjoyable. Koreans sure do cry and scream a lot and this drama is no exception.
But this isn't just any crap--the first half is very entertaining. It really gives the emo porn payoff when our hero just keeps doing his best no matter how much injustice is piled upon him, and when our heroine *realizes* she's been unfair to him. The latter half kind of slows down, but it's still watchable. The way the main villain can't act at all, and his sudden transformation in the latter half into a real moustache-twirling villain (and then sudden redemption) hampers the story. But the main couple is ADORABLE. I don't think I've seen an older woman/younger man couple where *both* parties are so *adorable* before. And when they're together and happy it's like the cutest thing ever, like puppies and rainbows. How could anyone be opposed to them? How can anyone withstand the power of their cuteness rays? I do wish they at least kissed more, but they're so virginal, it's kind of ridiculous. Other characters get to have sex. There are internal constraints and complications that prevent our main couple from feeling free to engage in physical demonstrations of affection for a good amount of time, though, I understand that.
Korean teachers bully their students to a disgraceful degree. Not just here, but in all the depictions of Korean schools I've seen. Jesus. There was even a scene where the female teacher beat the male student's ass with a rod for disobeying her. Kinky...
The male student kind of reminds me of Kame in Tatta Hitotsu no Koi, in that he works hard to scrape money together to keep his family together, acting as a surrogate parent to his younger brother.
I was wondering if the teacher/student, older woman/younger man thing is a kind of modern version of courtly love. I like it because of power dynamics. But lots of other people who are different from me like it too. So maybe what they're tuning into, besides the taboo, is the elevation of the woman. The younger man loves her from afar, so purely, sacrificing himself on the altar of their love. (Look at Kame's scratched and injured arms from working all night just to buy the woman a bottle of birth-year wine in Sapuri.) It's never depicted as a lust-based relationship. (Even though Senpai and Sensei's relationship in SOS is definitely carnal, his impassioned speech that "Humans are born to love and be loved" and insistence on proposing marriage makes it clear that Love, not lust is at work here.) He overcomes many hardships to preserve their love. (Look at Jin out in the Mongolian winter almost dying in order to write his daily email to Anego. Look at Senpai purposely failing school for two years and sacrificing his future to be near to Sensei in SOS.) Older men have to worry about their careers and status and progeny, and use women as a tool to these ends, but to younger man as depicted in these stories, the woman he loves is his most important, number one priority. And because they're young, they have no sense of perspective, so they really are able to do anything for love. As in courtly love, the love of the woman is elevated to almost a religious veneration. Chretien de Troyes' Lancelot and Guinevere explicitly make Love into a sacrament. It's easiest to see echoes of this in Majo no Jouken, where Takki takes the painting The Creation of Adam and sketches a new version, substituting his own face for Adam and Nanako for God. These stories also frequently have elements of coming of age stories for the boys, love for the woman literally making men out of them. So I guess it's the exploration of the transformative and transcendent power of love that appeals in these stories.