etoks21

Nice cinematography.

Frustrating, cliche story, but young actors were pretty good.

6.5/10

Lame and stupid, but also kind of cute.

7.5/10

On edit: I just watched this a second time after two years and thoroughly enjoyed it. Didn't feel "lame and stupid" this time around, but very, very cute and funny. Actors are a great contrast in face and body, and both did a good job. Very natural. Even the drunk scene was quite convincing. I'm surprised Han Sang Gil hasn't had more roles than what I see on his bio. I could see him as a strong leading man.

A couple of minutes of making out would have been nice at the end, but this is Korean, after all.

New rating: 8.5/10!

Hi, do you have a link to where I could watch this with english subs? It sounds hilarious.

Wow. Is that character some kind of germaphobe?

u r a vile individual.

Your review says you look forward to watching it again, eventually. Is it that you want to watch again but don't want anyone else to see it...what?

If you were "uncomfortable," why didn't you stop watching?

Newsflash: Lots of MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS have sex. This movie is about two of them.

If you wanted to see a movie about HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS who have sex, you should have searched for one on IMDB. This is not a movie about those characters. Had the students been "aged up" to high school or college then it would be an entirely different story, with different implications, situations, and consequences. This is not that story.

Finally, just so you know, you were NOT "watching them have sex." You were watching two actors pretending to have sex because, they are...like, actors and stuff. Having sex is not "weird." It is one of the most natural things in the world.

It's hilarious that you do all this prudish bitching about actors pretending to have sex at 15, and then you finish your review by saying "I do want to eventually watch it again...' lol Apparently you didn't mind all that nasty, uncomfortable, unnecessary teenage sex all that much.

We haven't discussed the fact Meiko and Eiji kept banging each other for weeks after she stopped banging Makki. Seems to me they had stopped trying to get her knocked up, or at least Makki thought they had stopped, but Eiji and Meiko kept fucking, which is why the dates she gave Makki regarding her pregnancy and what he figured out from his reading didn't match up. Makki is unambitious but far from stupid.

Or am I missing some other explanation for the source of betrayal Makki spoke of feeling toward them? I think Eiji kept doing her because he wanted to please his father with a kid, which is insane to begin with, AND he wanted to keep playing out the fantasy of this new, romantic love he claimed to feel for Meiko.

Thanks so much for all your replies. You've given me a lot to think about, and helped me see connections and metaphors I missed even on a second watch.

However, I still strongly disagree about what choices Eiji will make going forward. Do you recall the desperate sorrow and LOVE in his eyes and on his face when he and Meiko met up with Makki at the restaurant and he sat across from Makki at the table. The acting was oscar-worthy in that the only words he could get out were "I'm sorry..." but his face, eyes and tears spoke an entire novel's worth of passion and longing.

As Makki walked them to the car afterward, it was all Eiji could do not to stop himself from getting in that car and scooping Makki up in his arms, or going to his knees in front of him and begging forgiveness. Returning to his daily life of lies was the last thing he wanted to do, but for now, he did it.

But then that was followed by the weeping into the bathrobe scene back at the apartment. First he sat and smiled as he looked at pics of his daughter, then he looked at pics of Makki, then he sobbed into the bathrobe.

My point here is that a person like Eiji can't go on indefinitely stifling all that love and passion on a daily basis, as well he shouldn't have to, no matter what has gone before. Eiji is not the type to be comfortable with living a double life; one as a straight, married man with a kid and the other out in gay bars on weekends picking up one night stands. If he keeps doing what he's doing, he will implode/lose his mind. So, I see it as a matter of when and how this would happen, not IF it would happen. That feels like a given to me.

Of course, the question then becomes, will Makki still be available? I really like the hairdresser and his slow, gradual falling in love with Makki. I loved how he told Makki he was "dear to me." This is only a small part of the reason this story is ripe for a sequel.

A few things before I go:

Eiji and Meiko CAN'T be living some straight, married fantasy in which they actually believe they're in love and that this is the way they should live the rest of their lives. They both know all too well what went down before. So why, when they all met at the restaurant, and when Meiko saw clearly the reluctance with which Eiji joined her in the car, wouldn't she have been the one to speak up and say "this isn't right. We need to figure something out that includes you two together as a couple?"

I didn't hate her quite as much as I remembered doing before when I saw, this time around, the urgency with which she expressed a desire to see Makki, to get his contact info from the hairdresser. However, it seemed very odd to me that when the three of them met at the restaurant, neither one of them had anything to say. Eiji COULDN'T speak, but I expected there to be some concrete, well-thought-out points they'd want to get across. hell, they've had years to think about it.

Hell, Makki did most of the talking. The other two sat there weakly tearing up.

Also, do you have a clue on what went down between Eiji/Meiko and Eiji's parents, that was so negative? It was first referenced in a phone call between a still-pregnant Meiko and Eiji's sister when the sister asked if they had met up with the parents and the conversation became weird. Then the parents showed up to meet the baby, but it was clear they didn't know if they'd be allowed in, and Meiko had to give permission for that to happen.

Do you think they simply knew the whole story, and it was too weird for the dad to handle at first? Meiko banging both guys to get knocked up and all that?

As for the dad, I try to give them some slack because I know it's a cultural issue, but these Asian parents who are all about what THEY want and how THEY feel about everything, really upset and piss me off.

Again, thank you for all the new perspectives you have given me on this show. It won't be long before I'll watch it again. Have you watched only once? If so, I am truly impressed with your grasp of the writer/director's intentions, meanings of related scenes, etc.

What I mostly took away from my first watch was how much I loathed Meiko for coming between the guys, especially her and Eiji banging each other after she stopped sleeping with Makki. I mean, I hated her so much I could hardly breathe. When she had entered her last couple months of pregnancy and was on the phone with Eiji's sister, that scene especially drove me insane. She seemed so smug in what she had accomplished and completely unbothered by the fact Makki had been driven out of their relationship and was gone.

Now I think I misread some things. Not that she's blameless, not by far, but she may also not be the witch I recalled from my first watch. And yes, on their beach "let's get pregnant" trip, she was the one who said "no turning back," and her insistence really bugged me, but no one put a gun to Makki and Eiji's heads either.

That slow, silent scene in which they inch their way into bed together and eventually begin...having sex (I guess? It felt much more clinical than even that.) was so powerful on the second watch. There was dread, discomfort, weirdness, even creepiness going on. They were all proceeding together with this insane plan that two of the three didn't even want to do...and yet the went ahead. And the way Meiko lay there, absolutely motionless, as Makki and Eiji began to make out so they could get turned on enough to do her, was eerie. It made it so clear that she saw herself as simply the receptacle of their sperm, and wasn't even really going to engage with how she got it inside her. Yuck, but ooh, good stuff. :) I like weird, dark, troubling things like that.

God knows I've done plenty of things in my life I didn't really want to do, but I went ahead anyway for my reasons at the time.

See, to me, his dissolving into tears over Miiko's bathrobe is the confirmation that he IS gay, DOES love Miiko and not Mieko, and has now put himself in a horrible jam he's going to have to try to live with the rest of his life.

I'm all for happy OR sad endings, as long as whatever it is comes organically out of what went before. To me, that's the case here. Asian films have made me a lot more comfortable with open endings like this.

A great sequel could be made to this story, because Eiji is too good-hearted a man to keep living a lie forever. I see him as eventually leaving the bitch and either hunting Miiko down or just starting a new life on his own, living honestly as who he is. Which means there'd be a showdown with his selfish, horrible father, with Meiko, and potentially with Miiko, if he were to find him.

I am just about to start episode 7 of my second watch of this show. And after seeing it this time around, I don't disagree with you about the ace thing, maybe even aro. Either way, I despise Meiko's character. I know she's fucked up from her background but that doesn't excuse what she deliberately did, in my opinion, to the guys.

I think she's kind of a psychopath, in that she doesn't know how to interact with people emotionally on an intimate level, and so she wreaks destruction in her wake. To me, from the moment she said "I will have your baby," she knew at least subconsciously, what she was up to. And when both guys wanted to back out on their beach trip, and she said "No turning back..." that's when I understood her to be fully aware of what she was up to.

I began to dislike her with the first statement, and I began to hate her with the second.

It's a very unique show, especially for the BL genre, which is a big part of why even though I hate the FL, it's in my top 30 best BLs list.

And that's news to you?

Yeah, I was right...you're mixed up AND nuts.

And I'm tired of trying to communicate ESL MDLers whose grasp of the language is as weak as yours.

Either you have me mixed up with someone else or you're nuts or, more likely, both. Your comment is full of psycho accusations about things I never said. It may just be that your English sucks on top of your crazy.

I'm done with your BS.

No, I don't find myself intrigued. At all. :)

Boring, predictable tropes and cliches are...boring.

I'm just here to look at Sakae. I'd be here to look at the ex-BF, who is beautiful, also but the actor is playing him so well, and I loathe that type of person, that I don't actually find him sexually attractive.

I don't buy Sakae being in love with the nerd at all. It feels very artificial; as if he's acting out the script but there's no believable passion, lust, or yearning. Just an actor saying lines written to indicate those emotions, but the emotions are missing.

Damn.
Looks like that first-episode hand job might have been the high point of this series.

I was mostly bored, but totally agree with you about the way the restaurant owner is acting regarding Kai.
Why the hell couldn't Kai have kept the restaurant running while the owner is in the hospital?
Why doesn't the owner care that his asshole son is preventing Kai from visiting him in the hospital?
Why doesn't the owner care that his asshole son kicked Kai out of the house?
Makes me wonder if Kai is just playing Hiro for a place to stay...actually, that would be a provocative and interesting plot development in what otherwise has been a dull story since the first episode hand job.

As far as whatever the writer/director is/are trying to say, I'm getting something about Kai expecting nothing out of life, so that's what he gets. That's why he seems so blase' about everything, and events that one would expect to be upsetting, don't bother him. He doesn't expect them to go well in the first place. Which is why he wasn't angry about Hiro standing him up for the festival.

The only area in which he seems to care about a specific outcome he desires is in his pursuit of Hiro. However, if that's the case, why did he make no effort over a period of years to contact him until he had nowhere else to live?

I don't know...I'm just kind of blah about this one. It's not bad enough to drop, but it's not very engaging either.

Totally feel you but I'm sticking with it at least one more week.

Commonly known as a fag-hag.

Too bad to see this new-ish BL circle down the drain like other recent Japanese/Korean/Taiwanese BLs. Totally cliche plot, writing, dialogue, everything. Evil ex turns up, you know he's a snake, so you say "sure, come and work here and move in with me!" Yeah, that's believable.

No denying the guy is hot, and has one of the best platinum dye jobs I've seen in a BL (usually they don't leave the bleach on long enough and it comes out orange), but he's playing his part well and it's clear, even to someone who didn't know him, that he's a user and manipulator, no matter how hot.

But good heavens, the two of them look beautiful together, and the chemistry, lacking between the chef and the nerd, is off the charts with blondie.

Then, of course we have the nerd walking in at JUST the exact, precise moment he needed to to fulfill the writers' wish to use yet another lame BL trope, blah blah blah. Should have had him walk in on them doing the deed on the countertop. Now THAT would be some original writing.

oooh, and now the exciting dilemma of a possible move back to Tokyo in a YEAR, as if that's not enough time to figure things out together. I'm not putting this under a spoiler because it's just so lame and predictable; it's not like some huge, tidal wave of a plot twist, lol.

hmmm...pondering whether to drop or stick with it. Sakae is like cool water to the desert of my eyeballs, and I like his character too, so maybe one more episode. But this is one of those BLs I'll forget within two weeks of its finale.

Not one, single original thing about it.

oooh...you "can tell..." Wow, whatever shall I do?