BLISS RATING: ★★★★
“Don’t tell me you are afraid to fall in love.” – Quote from Takara’s Treasures
This is one of those hidden gems that starts out charmingly and you keep your fingers crossed for that sustainability to the end that hopefully will not feel contrived. Sometimes with these series, they start out emotionally impactful, but then reverts to trite and cliché scenarios to sustain itself. But this series not only started emotionally deep, it also ended up being deeply substantial. I honestly felt like we really got to know these two unlikeliest of inamoratos. Do not misinterpret what I just stated, however. Although this is not an intensely romantic story, it is nonetheless a profoundly solemn love story.
This is one of the most distinguishable love stories I have ever seen and certainly one of the more insightful Japanese ones. While Japanese BLs sometimes go deep, dark, and pensive and paint life generally in broad strokes as somber, this series projects intimacy between two guys in a non-intimate way but still affirms a sense of profound communion.
It is a serendipitous love story between two young men who should never have met except fate determined it to be so. One day as Shiga Takara (Iwase Yoji) is on a personal hiking expedition, he literally is confronted with a young man who is inconsolably crying. Takara, for whatever reason, takes pity on him, and comforts him. While his personal tragedy might not seem so consequential in the scheme of things, to this young man it is traumatically shattering. At just the right time, in just the right moment, and because the circumstances were aligned just right, Takara became his paladin and, in that moment, a bond was formed. Not merely one sided, either. There was also something about this young man that triggered in Takara, a remembrance of what happened. That young man asked him where he was from; with Takara explaining to him what school he attended, in a way as if he wanted him to know and remember.
That mysterious young man, who was so emotionally wrecked and fragile at the time, was Nakano Taishin (Konishi Eito). By sheer focus, Taishin was accepted into the same university as Takara, since he wanted to follow the sempai who for him was special, although he did not know why or necessarily how. He wanted to honor him and thank him. Takara, outwardly like a tsundare, was drawn to him. Almost immediately, the two of them awkwardly became more than friends yet they and others could not clearly define how far beyond friendship their connection was.
The story is a soft, gentle tale mainly between the two of them. Takara not only watches over the naïve and innocent Taishin; he protects him. Dotes over him that even others see. Yet he does not want to stifle Taishin’s wonderment of the world.
For Taishin, everything is new, exciting, and a joy to behold. For Takara, the world is a place to escape to and from at the same time. Certainly not wanting to involve himself with others, as his fear of absorbing them would become like a possession that he needed to consume or even worse to him, he would become a burden to them. He has learned to be fearful of love; while Taishin it is second nature to him.
This is a story of two very lost souls who found each other. Very, very different from one another. Almost completely incompatible with one another. Yet they connected more so on emotional and cogent levels than on a physical level. The exchanges between them are not romantic but they are intensely ardent on all levels except physical. Their love is not based nor borne on a physical attraction to each other but a connection of the mind or perhaps even their souls. It is reasoning, it is spiritual, it is powers of comprehension. They complement and supplement each other. They cannot live apart from each other yet do not want to hinder the direction that each one is going in.
Yes, the culmination of their relationship is physical – they do kiss. But it is not the physicality of their relationship that is the strongest. They have laid the foundation for a relationship based upon emotional, cognitive, and finally, physical – all equal.
Who really S.T.O.L.E. this series? Iwase Yoji as Shiga Takara and Konishi Eito as Nakano Taishin did. We watched both expose themselves to us and we get to see why they are the way they are. Takara outwardly appears to be uncaring, but inwardly is the complete opposite of that. His treasures, as the title says, are elegantly simple and profoundly personal. And he found in Taishin an individual who understood the value of his treasures and how priceless they are. Taishin seemingly naïve, absorbs the world like a sponge and creates a safe and accepting place for Takara to be in. And yes, even a loving one. In the process of becoming a couple, they become blended not as one but as a synergy. Both are growing into acceptance of who they are with all their strengths and foibles. The walls that have separated them from the world are crumbling all due to the puissance from each other. This is a wonderfully acted series full of so much growth that seems imperceptible but is always moving constantly. Neither change for the other; only accepts the other for who he is. The acting makes these transformations seem subtle but in the scheme of this short series, they are profound. And were done masterfully and skillfully.
I was surprised and taken aback by some of the negative comments that were hurled at this series, especially against Taishin as a ‘stalker’. The major aspect behind a stalker is someone who harasses another with unwanted and obsessive attention. Although Taishin’s admiration coupled with his naiveté behavior, might be irregular, he could hardly be considered a stalker. He was really a very sheltered individual who did not know how to relate to others, and he did not and could not grasp that what he was feeling was love. He had no reference point as to what that was. In the meantime, Takara was certainly stalked by female students because of his astonishingly good looks. And I think he would know and feel what stalking was. He himself found Taishin irresistible and even though he tried to pretend he was disinterested, knew he was being drawn into the natural charms of Taishin. And he was better able to know the signs of what falling in love were.
I hesitate to call Taishin a deredere because that implies a cognition of his feeling. He simply did not know what he is feeling initially. For him, it was a nebulous world of feeling good just being around Takara. While he idolized him, it was not necessarily worshipping him. The series points out many avenues of predilections that Taishin explored to try and pinpoint his exact feelings until he realized on his own what it was. And then he puts the pieces together. When he does, his insight into his own behavior and that of Takara rockets from superficial to intrinsic.
What I loved so much about this series is that Tashin does not see the Adonis-like physical beauty of Takara and Takara does not see the ordinary elemental nature of Tashin. Each sees what is hidden underneath even if we cannot get past the obvious. That is the power of this series. It makes us see these two not for what they are but who they are.
This series is a remarkable study of the character development of two rather asymmetrical individuals who needed each other, found each other, and for lack of a better term and become the epitome redefining the term, soulmates, a term I truly detest using. What is further astonishing is no one else sees it except one – at the end in the spin-off. (Perhaps it is just me, but I found the narrative with the spin-off to be a bit too contrived and unnecessary. It slips the story back into banality).
Overall, however, this is an exceptional and deeply introspective BL from Japan that concentrates on the two protagonists that makes you feel as if you are watching the cultivation of a relationship that is a world onto their own.
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