BLISS RATING: ★★★★+
“I believe that two people are connected at the heart, and it doesn’t matter what you do, or who you are, or where you live; there are no boundaries or barriers if two people are destined to be together.” – Julia Roberts
This BL is the ultimate tease. It has all the right ingredients. Intensely handsome men. A great story of lost souls. Self-sacrifice that legends are made of. Undying love. Morality. A sense of duty and responsibility. Pathos. All the pieces of an emotional puzzle were there except for one thing – emotion. I felt nothing. If I were just listening to this story via audio, I would have been on the floor weeping and wailing. But watching it left me feeling empty and robbed. It was not badly acted. On the contrary. It just never ever got deep. It never displayed what its emotions were trying to capture.
New employee, Kazuma (Sakurai Yuki) has returned to Japan from a long stay in the United States and it coincides with being in April, which has particularly fond memories for him from his childhood. He left Japan some 10 years ago after he recovered from being seriously sick, coupled with an incident with his best friend and first love. Kazuma is hired in the HR department at a design agency company.
Unbeknownst to Kazuma, his intimate friend as well as first love from his high school days, Ren (Aloha Takamatsu) is the top designer there and is their star employee. Initially surprised, with a sense of joy followed by a burden of discomfort as their unresolved departure from one another when they were in high school remains looming over their rekindled friendship.
Both the beauty and downfall of this series is its reliance on its history. It banters between their younger versions and their older selves. While I enjoyed seeing how they got to where they were, it dizzied the mind between the two realms. Ironically, they were much more honest with each other when they were young than when they were older. Both suffered tremendously from being ripped from each other at a young age. A very vulnerable age when their sexuality was just awaking, and they were exploring their bodies with each other. For me, their older selves were simply continuing where they left off as youngsters, but now were intensifying what they had, but with a lot of hidden pain and perhaps shame.
Who really S.T.O.L.E. this series? The reality is only as good as its premise. And that is laid down by the young actors who played the young Kazuma (Takeno Sena) and young Ren (Mitsnobu Jiyo). Their innocence, their initial desire to be with each other, their early exploration of their bodies with each other gives this series its foundation and its basis for continuing it. They also laid out their desires. If it had been able to develop naturally and on its own, who knows where it would have gone. But unfortunately, Kasuma’s illness and Ren’s self-sacrifice changed the course of their direction. Or perhaps merely altered it. And both paid a painful price for doing what comes innately when society and families thinks otherwise. These two young boys played these roles without hesitation and with an intensity rarely seen even with adult stars. It felt and meant something real to them and that came across. They were boys exploring each other and themselves and the price they paid for it was heavy as seen in their faces and expressions. What should have been a time of ecstasy in their lives was a moment when their lives shattered, they turned inward, and joy was lost.
Fast forward to the present when Kasuma and Ren do not now know how to either act or react to each other. There is obvious sexual tension and enormous desire between the two. Kasuma’s inability to figure out or ask why Ren was whisked away when they were young, weighs heavily on him. Sometimes, appearing as if he did know, its knowledge would be another milestone in his life that perhaps he is unprepared to face. But when he did find out, he rushes unhesitatingly only to find Ren at just the right time before the dastardly head of HR, Sanada (Nao Okabe) is prepared to rape him. Too much.
This becomes emblematic of why this series simply fell apart. Rather than become character-driven, it became situational-driven. Thus, never allowing the actors, to ever get deep into their characters or develop a deeper sense of connection or chemistry. Sure, there are lots of sex romps here, but I did not drown in any type of couples’ chemistry. It is all acting. The only real sense of togetherness was the two young men because they were innocent and did not know any better. We did not need all these side-stories to hide behind to enhance the connection between Kasuma and Ren. All that seemed like nothing more than a smokescreen.
I might even accept the parents losing their minds over the fact that their sons just had gay sex, but for Ren’s parents to do what they did was almost criminal. They disown him because he is gay. How do you recover from that? And at the end, when Kazuma’s mother said that she was not upset because they were men but that they were too young. I could write volumes on the stupidity and imbecilicness of that comment. Somehow that is ok by societal standards?
This series for me has no character depth except for their two young selves. Yet the issues that are tackled in this series are cataphatically monumental. Just to show that two men love each other:
1. One gets seriously ill after having gay sex.
2. The other is disowned from his family because he is gay.
3. Kasuma lacks the courage to find out why Ren left suddenly when he was younger.
4. The work environment is toxic and abuse and condoned by the president.
5. The HR director is a rapist and an attempted rapist.
6. And it is only Ren that can solve it? Why is he so magical?
7. Ren hides away without telling Kazuma where he is. How is that supposed to make Kasuma feel?
8. There is an obvious mental health issue, hidden or overt, with Ren that needs to be dealt with in therapy, i.e., the relationship with his close friend, Yagumi (Furukawa Tsuyoshi).
9. While there are sexual romps between Kasuma and Ren, there is no real chemistry between the two of them and some of their kissing scenes are strained and artificial, both as actors and characters.
10. There is so much dark hidden meaning, innuendo, and downright negativity between gay sex and a brooding almost melancholic feel about this story. It feels so heavy that one could not feel or sense any significant happy ending for gay relationships. All there is, is negativity.
And that is what the underlying message is. Dark, Unhappy. Sad. Tenuous. Just once, I would like to see a BL, more so from Japan, that does not contain so many uncontrollable outside sources of pain in the lives of people who are gay that somehow affect their ability to develop a relationship. Why must that always be so? Certainly, I understand the taboos surrounding a societies hang-ups on gay relationships. Is that not enough for a full story without having to pile onto that to make the story, what? More Interesting? And in order to justify the gay relationship, there has to be noble acts or individuals to make them larger than life. That gay people must be more noble? Creative? Or worse yet, must prove themselves to be better to be accepted?
This story drifted into being a soap opera with cute characters covering way too many issues that even a genie in a magic lantern with three wishes could not mend. All we wanted was to see how two innocent, naïve young men after enjoying sex were discovered by their parents and forced to stay away from each other. Tragically, for 10 years.
However, now let us see a story that mends that wrong with less roadblocks and constantly needing to prove their worth but allows them to go deep into their souls to discover themselves. Permit them to grieve for what they lost. And revel in ecstasy for what they rediscovered. And for once, simply ride off into the sunset on a white horse unencumbered, if you understand the euphemism. And let it all flow naturally at their own making, without having to authenticate anything else except to each other.
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