BLISS RATING: ★★★
“Expectation is the root of all heartache.” – William Shakespeare
There is an American expression that is so apt for this series. It goes something like this: “To snatch defeat from the jaws of victory”. That seems to be so apropos to Bls as of late, especially for Japanese ones. They start out so promising and slowly slide downhill into mundaness and then burst into a flurry at the end as if everything is and can be exculpated. This time, it just does not work. The story is flat, the characters are flat, and the production is even flatter. It all feels so lazy.
There is little here that is original. It is a story within a story. Shirasaki Yuki (Nihara Taisuke) finally gets his big break in acting after many years of trying to land a significant role. He will be starring opposite a popular actor named Hayama Asami (Komagine Kiita) in a BL series. Ironically, Asami and Shirasaki know each other, since they were in college a while ago. Asami ended up surpassing Shirasaki quickly to become a rising star even though Asami was not interested in acting.
Initially, Shiraski is guarded about his abilities to act with Asami and so Asami suggests that they pretend to be a ‘couple’ to help ease him into the role. Unbeknownst to Shiraski, Asami has always maintained an admiration for him and an attraction. As the two get closer, the feelings between them become stronger and so does their bond. But as usual in these kinds of series, there is always the issue of poor communication, or misunderstood communication, or complete lack of that thwarts the development of an early meaningful relationship. Thus, a goodly part of the middle of this series shows both meandering about like lost puppies wondering what the other is thinking about him without once being adults about it. This conceptualization of how to make love happen is just getting so worn out and ridiculous and unbelievably trite.
Who really S.T.O.L.E. this series? There are no bad performances in this series. I do think that Nihara Taisuke as Shirasaki Yuki had a much more challenging role, however. His performance had to cover a lot of territory from being an insecure first-time actor in a big performance in a major role and then play a ‘real’ character otherwise. In addition to being the actual character in the pretend tv series. The whole filming of the scene, as an example, of him trying to get his line out in the series was a stroke of genius and exceptionally well-done and ought to be used for any acting class in trying to convey a deep emotion and how to get into that emotion. It required a greater range of acting and I appreciated the depth he had to display for us to see all of that. Unfortunately, Komagine Kiita as Hayama Asami was not given much to work with. His affect was so flat from the beginning and the direction did not allow him to deviate from that pattern very much. His character and ‘himself’ never seemed to change appreciably. He was always so one-dimensional.
Like many other BLs of its elk, this series suffered too much from a heavy reliance on banal, contrived misunderstandings that anyone with a third-grade education could figure out were not authentic. It all felt so overdone and manipulated to fill a story rather than create an original one. Why can people not communicate their feelings early on? Or at least make it more clearly known to the other person? Honestly, Shirasaki was as dumb as a box of rocks not to pick up that Asami was interested in him. You simply cannot be that dense. He asked you to be his pretend boyfriend! And to have several more episodes centered around Asami’s muteness in being crystal clear in his own words and actions towards Shirasaki was just too much to bear as believable. Asami cannot be that lame as to not take just a small step forward and ask Shirasaki for clarification about how he felt especially when he decided he no longer needed to ‘pretend’ to be his boyfriend.
If you like someone and you sense ‘vibes’, ‘feelings’, or ‘suggestions’ (or whatever other euphemistic term you want to use) from that individual coming back to you, then it is time to make it clear or, at the very least, clearer. ASK!
What a beautiful story we could have had if this had been the case. As the last episode showed, to my surprise, there was a lot of screen chemistry between them ending with their love scenes together being shockingly sweet, tender, and quite believable, considering the silly contrived pretend distance they maintained otherwise. The bedroom scenes looked surprisingly realistic (for a Japanese BL). So, it was there and could have been there all along. Why must we wait for the end for a series to literally come alive?
Just once, I would like to see something less artificially dramatic, and a story develop progressively in terms of a relationship. It would have been quite interesting, for example, if the relationship was established early on to see how that would have affected the filming/production of the series – either negatively or positively. Would it also have affected the dynamics of the other characters in the series both on and off the screen and if so, how? That would have at least made for good drama instead of watching two guys eating dinner alone with melodramatic music playing in the background. The formula for these series, I am afraid, is getting stale, no matter how many handsome faces you put in front of a camera. Do something different to want us to care more about the two characters.
This series had potential but squandered it away by telling a story that went nowhere and came to life only at the end. Why do we have to wait until the end to get good drama?
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