I feel personally obligated at this point to review every entry of this show, given how much I enjoyed season one. It's a hill I will die on, so to speak, I suppose.

I have mixed feelings towards the movie, in comparison to the show.

I DID enjoy it, don't get me wrong, it's a good movie, the acting is great, and it carries on with the spirit of the show and the essence of what made it great: the cozy-ness, the amazing cooking, the genuine portrayal of a relationship of two men in their 40s in a country that doesn't recognize their partnership legally, the navigating said relationship with family, workplace and society as a whole.

The movie does add a bit more on the personal feelings of both characters, with a situation that generates a parallel for both in different points of the movie.

And when I say "a bit" I mean...a tiny bit. I am disappointed in the fact that I don't think they took it far enough for a movie.

It felt like a long episode of the show and, to be honest, when you have the opportunity of a movie, I think your storytelling possibilities expand in other directions that I don't feel they took. Ossan's Love, for example, isn't as good as this show when it comes to taking things seriously (and the acting isn't as good as this, in general), but they did use their movie to give a step forward that allowed them to pull off a better season 2.

I feel like they didn't go as far as they could have with the movie, in terms of using the vehicle to give a much deeper glimpse into one of their conflicts, picking just one to explore and going all for it. The movie has a sort of array of situations that get developed somewhat, rather than one that can get fully expanded.

I say this also because, since watching season one, I was able to read some of the manga and I feel like the manga gets more intimate with Kenji's and Shiro's relationship in some levels that we don't get in live action form. And, when I say "intimate", I mean communication wise, not necessarily just physically. I feel like there's a lot of deep emotional exploration that gets somewhat cut short by the fact that they move on to the next issue before delving deeper into the prior one, and the movie format could have allowed them to have the space that a series format may not allow for them to do just that.

All in all, it's a lovely movie and I'm happy to see more of this show coming out. I have high hopes for the second season that I've already started. I just wish the movie could have given a step forward in development, but I don't think this was quite that.