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gillianthecat · 9 months

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jumping on the bandwagon...

10 11 12 BL Boys That I Want Carnally

... or have lusted after at some point in my watching career. (My actor crushes wax and wane over time.)

It looks like everyone else is doing characters, not actors, but I was inspired by @lurkingshan's post which only had gifs no names, so I drew my own conclusions. And I'm rarely attracted to the character—they belong with their partner! or are just someone I wouldn't get along with—so listing actors feels more accurate.

(It was originally 10 because I thought I needed to choose only one of the Guardian boys, but then I decided why not both. But I didn't wanna delete anyone else. So now it's 11. And then I remembered War so now it's 12.)

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Lin Zi Hong (Sam Lin) of We Best Love

Jo Hyuk Joon of Blueming

Zhu Yilong of Guardian (can I count it as a BL for the purposes of this list?)

Bai Yu of Guardian (can I count it as a BL for the purposes of this list?)

Man Trisanu Soranun of Step By Step (but only in character) (which is not the same as being attracted to the character)

Meguro Ren of Kieta Hatsukoi

Ji Sung of The Devil Judge (can I count it as BL for the purposes of this list?)

Jung Taek Woon (Leo) second lead of Happy Ending Romance

Shin Myung Sung (side character/second lead) of Happy Merry Ending

Zee Pruk Panich of Why R U? and Cutie Pie

Izuka Kenta of the Pornographer series and Candy Color Paradox

War Wanarat Ratsameerat of Love Mechanics

Because I have to over explain every list I make... These are not necessary the actors I find most beautiful, and there are some actors I think are absolutely insanely gorgeous (e.g. First Kanaphan, PP Krit, and Matsuoka Koudai) that I'm just not attracted to, sometimes because they seem too young, sometimes just because.

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gabrielokun · 7 months

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#Surrogacy #Surrogacy The movie #サロガシー #Gabriel makes stuff #Hosoda Yoshihiko #Ejima Satoshi #Izuka Kenta #Mizuno Keito #SatoshiKeito #KeitoSatoshi #Miyata Sanae #Ejima Akiko #JBL #JapBL #BL Drama #Japanese BL #JDrama #Japanese Drama #Japanese series

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waitmyturtles · 2 years

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CW: MAJOR SPOILER ALERTS FOR THE MOVIE “THE PORNOGRAPHER: PLAYBACK.” LONG POST!

I feel like there’s been something humming in the wind lately around the franchise of The Novelist/The Pornographer. We’ve seen a cameo by the incomparable Izuka Kenta in Candy Color Paradox, Yoshida Munehiro is about to cameo in The End of the World, With You, and The Novelist’s Twitter account has been buzzing with news about new DVDs and theater showings of the last installment of the franchise, The Pornographer: Playback. Miki Koichiro, the screenwriter and director of the franchise, has TWO shows out at the moment, the aforementioned TEOTWWY, as well the sessy-sessy Raise de wa Chanto Shimasu, the three seasons of which I am dying to watch as soon as there’s a solidly bad season of QL sometime in the future (which seems like will never happen in my lifetime, bless all these amazing QLs for coming out every season!). Couple all of this with recent reviews of the OG Novelist and Mood Indigo series by the fabulous @gillianthecat (here) and @respectthepetty (here), and I was happily reminded of good times of watching all of these parts way way back when I first discovered QL/BL in 2019/20.

When the amazing @lurkingshan commented on a stray thoughts post by @bengiyo that she had seen The Pornographer: Playback, I was VERY intrigued. With HUGE thanks and big ups to @lurkingshan, I watched it over the weekend, and here are my thoughts! I’m going to put up a break to keep y’all from getting spoiled if you want to avoid it.

First off, let’s make sure we know what all the installments are, and that we’ve watched what we’ve needed to get to the movie. We have:

1) 2018 -- The Novelist: the original meeting between student Kuzumi Haruhiko and adult author Kijima Rio

2) 2019 -- Mood Indigo: a prequel depicting the sexual engagements between Kijima Rio and his classmate, Kido Shirou

3) 2021 -- The Pornographer: Spring Life: a very short vignette set 2 1/2 years after Kuzumi and Kijima first met. They’re now in a long-distance relationship, and Kuzumi visits Kijima in the countryside at Kijima’s sister’s house, where he’s living as he continues to write.

(The first three works are all available on Viki.)

So I was BEYOND THRILLED to get to watch the movie and see all of this wrap up. If most of y’all only watched up to Mood Indigo, you saw Kijima re-meet with Kuzumi. Kuzumi, at that time, was just becoming a successful employee in the advertising business.

Spring Life hints that things are still going well for Kuzumi, and that he was looking forward to spending a summer break with his long-distance boyfriend. Most notably, the piece ends with Kuzumi jumping from honorifics, by asking Kijima if he (Kuzumi) could call Kijima “Rio-san,” which we know indicates intimacy. Kijima’s like, whatever you’d like, and the smile on Kuzumi’s face takes up the whole screen, it seems.

So then we finally get to The Pornographer: Playback, which begins during the same summer break. Continuing with the theme and mood that I like to call melosexual (the music alone of this franchise is SO INTENSE, let alone the heaty sex scenes), the guys head to a love hotel and do their thang. At the end of the night, as they’re getting dressed, Kijima finds a business card in Kuzumi’s wallet for a hostess club that Kuzumi is forced to go to with work colleagues.

Without divulging a tremendous amount more about the plot at this moment, the movie is basically structured around the push-and-pull of Kijima’s inability to move authentically closer to people -- not just Kuzumi, but also his sister, who Kijima disappoints repeatedly by backing out of family events.

Kijima’s essentially paralyzed by fear and insecurity that he is a terrible person -- one that is not worthy of love. His sister is so overwhelmingly angry about it that she essentially kicks him out of the house, and blames their mother for never calling him out on his namby-pamby bullshit (at least, that’s in her eyes). At another point in the movie, he frustrates Kuzumi so much that Kuzumi walks out on the relationship and heads back to Tokyo, a surprising move for the otherwise always-devoted younger companion.

It takes a serious scolding by a hospitalized and flirtatious owner of a karaoke snack bar (you read that right) for Kijima to get his damn head back on straight and fight for his relationship with Kuzumi. (And, HILARIOUSLY, I was cackling -- in the process of this, Kijima has KIDO -- KIDO OF ALL PEOPLE -- call Kuzumi on Kijima’s behalf, to get Kuzumi to talk to Kijima to reconcile. KIJIMA used KIDO to call KUZUMI. Lord.)

Okay, so what I’m really getting at here is that the movie showed that the whole franchise was missing two KEY elements that the first three parts did not have: comedy and authentic emotional connection. There was actually a little comedy in this! Besides the whole Kido thing (which I’ll get back to in a minute), there were a couple of bumbling moments that were designed to elicit some lightness, mostly with the snack bar owner, a flighty gal with a lovely son who tries to hook up with takes Kijima under her wing.

About the other element: we FINALLY, FINALLY SAW KIJIMA SHOWING SOME EMOTION ABOUT SOMETHING. He really regretted letting things go to shit with Kuzumi. Kuzumi called Kijima out for wasting Kuzumi’s time to leave work in Tokyo and visit the countryside. Kuzumi felt like Kijima wasn’t taking him seriously, and was constantly pulling back. I mean -- Kijima was living away from Kuzumi.... for what, exactly? It’s not ever clearly explained. And Kuzumi got angry and left.

This is a great time to mention the excellent post by @emotionallychargedtowel on pursuer-distancer dyads, because the Kijima-Kuzumi push-and-pull in this movie perfectly defined this dyad dance. When Kuzumi got fed the fuck up and pulled way back -- Kijima finally stepped into his emotion and owned his desire to be with Kuzumi.

Honestly, in the first three installments of this franchise -- I felt like Kijima really didn’t talk too much. I felt like he was far more defined by his brooding, his letting the winds take him to where he was at any given moment, ragingly sexual and lonely all at once. He simmered -- he was flinty, defensive, and used his sexual energy to dominate and burn the emotional energy all around himself.

The movie showed a TOTALLY different side of him. To me, the movie showed that his relationship with Kuzumi, long distance as it was, HAD a softening impact on him -- even to the point that Kijima dropped everything he was up to in the countryside to head to Tokyo and fight for the relationship. Kijima needed to be rendered totally alone, one last time, to come to realize that the connection he had with Kuzumi was worth fighting for.

And, yes, in the process of it, he brought back Kido in the mix -- which was also seriously poignant.

REALLY SERIOUS SPOILER HERE, y’all, especially if you love/hate/gaaahh that awful devil, Kido!

. . . . . .

Kido asks Kijima if they could have ever had the same kind of relationship as Kijima is fighting for with Kuzumi! AAAAAHHHH! AND! AND! KIJIMA SAYS, no way. We’re too similar.

WHICH IS TOTALLY TRUE! They’re both self-indulgent, selfish assholes! I mean, after that insane sex scene in Mood Indigo, Kido just fucking LEFT -- he just LEFT, and GOT MARRIED, and HAD A KID, and was like, peace the fuck out, I can’t actually be my honest queer self with you, Kijima, because I think that’s actually abnormal (oh, Kido, you internally messed up piece of shit, AAAHHH).

Whereas, as beautifully analyzed in @respectthepetty‘s review, Kuzumi represents honesty and openness -- the kind of traits that Kijima doesn’t have, but is aspiring to, in order to be with Kuzumi. AAAHHH.

I was seriously like, WHOA, WHAT AM I WATCHING HERE, at that moment. AND, AND? At the end of that scene? Kido wishes Kijima good luck. And says: “You better keep Kuzumi-kun. He’s a valuable asset.” Of course, what a Kido thing to say -- that humans are assets, commodities. But -- he sends Kijima off with good wishes.

And then.

Kijima reunites with Kuzumi. He called Kuzumi by Kuzumi’s name, Haruhiko. AND -- holy shit, y’all, my mind was blown. He tells Kuzumi that he loves Kuzumi by saying ichiban aishiteru.

I tell you, I was FLOORED. All throughout the movie, I’m like, “dang, Kijima keeps talking and talking, and I just don’t remember him TALKING all that much before in the other three series.”

And then he DROPS the ichiban aishiteru! And I think BOTH me AND Kuzumi are BOTH LIKE, WHAT THE DAMN, DUDE!

I’ve spoiled a LOT, but I won’t say more after this, except to say the following:

The ending was one of the happiest, LOVELIEST endings of a drama/movie I’ve seen in QL. Oh. my. god. Talk about SATISFYING. EVERY. CHECKBOX. MARKED. Takezai Terunosuke and Izuka Kenta were MAGNIFICENT. I had SERIOUS tears. They got in everything -- they got the heat, they got in FAMILY, LOTS OF FAMILY, GORGEOUS shots, FEELINGS. ALL OF IT.

@bengiyo made an excellent point recently in one of his reviews of TEOTWWY that it seems like Japan lately has only been doing high heat in stories about death. It’s an accurate point: all of the pieces of The Novelist came out well before TEOTWWY and Eternal Yesterday, the two most recent shows about death that had heaty elements. I kind of wonder about something. I wonder if other directors and screenwriters are like.... The Novelist did it the best. We can’t mess with that standard.

Because -- Takezai’s and Izuka’s acting in those scenes is BEYOND EXCELLENT. It was NECESSARILY EXCELLENT to end this franchise on such a warm, happy, COMPLETE high note.

Now that I can look back on all four parts of the whole franchise, what Miki Koichiro did for us by way of Kijima was to show the whole-scale growth of a man vis à vis love. This guy, Kijima -- a brilliant writer who was influenced by a sexually provocative teacher, someone who was left inexplicably behind by a tormented, internally homophobic lover/benefactor -- felt he was deserving of nothing. And then he found his something in Kuzumi. He nearly destroyed the relationship, multiple times. And as he fell and slipped while climbing the hill of happiness, he was able to get a stronger and stronger grip each time he tried harder. And he was supported by people around him, including family and random friends, to give him lift.

This movie was a lot more straightforward than I had honestly expected. I 100% expected more of the melosexualness of the first three parts of the series. Instead, what I got was a WHOLESOME (I can’t believe I’m using that word, but it’s true!), complete, and uplifting story of a man finding his true happiness in his lover, his companion, his chosen family. All of it certainly laced with heat, for sure, but also very deep, very convincing love.

It was utterly fabulous. It might be too emotional, maybe too family-oriented for some who preferred the dark heat of the previous installments. But Playback, in my eyes, was a perfect closing note for a man who honestly deserved happiness after the work, and the SELF-CHANGE he put in, to get love in the first place. If you are a fan of this whole series, and can get your hands on the movie, I beg you to watch it, even just for one of the best happy endings you’ll ever see in QLs.

#spoilers #the novelist #the pornographer #the novelist: playback #the novelist playback #the pornographer: playback #the pornographer playback #mood indigo #the novelist: spring life #the novelist spring life #the pornographer: spring life #the pornographer spring life #takezai terunosuke #izuka kenta #yoshida munehiro #miki koichiro

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respectthepetty · 2 years

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Since I was mesmerized by Izuka Kenta in Candy Color Paradox and @gillianthecat wrote a great recommendation for it, I decided to finally watch The Novelist and Mood Indigo, and, boy(s) oh boy(s), do I have thoughts:

Both sexual relationships began in very fucked up ways because Kijima gave Kido and Kuzumi exactly what they wanted by pushing a boundary they didn't think he was capable of crossing. Kijima tricked Kuzumi into his life but gave him an out. Kido manipulated Kijima into his life but refused to let him go.

While Kido was disgusted with Kijima and himself ("I hate myself when I'm with you"), Kuzumi was worried about Kijima ("There's something wrong with you"), and those two reactions dictated how each man interacted with Kijima.

Kido's relationship with Kijima was sexual solely because Kido wouldn't allow himself to feel anything beyond that. He was aggressive, domineering, and distant with Kijima, so he would never have to evaluate why he loved him.

Kuzumi's relationship with Kijima was intimate from the beginning because of the nature of their work arrangement. Unlike Kido, who was seen as some kind of life saver since he gave Kijima a job even though Kujima gave him a place to live, Kuzumi was introduced as merely an observer and temporary guest of Kijima's life, so the power dynamic that was prominent in Kijima's relationship with Kido didn't exist with Kuzumi. Kuzumi got to watch Kijima unscathed because he comfortably fit into Kijima's life rather than disrupted it like Kido.

Because Kido kept Kijima at a distance, their interactions were tangled with flirtatious comments and lust. There was always an underlying tension that could boil over, but they never reached deep enough to allow anything beyond the superficial and sexual.

Kijima tried to treat his relationship with Kuzumi like his relationship with Kido. Kuzumi wouldn't allow that behavior from Kijima. He didn't want his defense mechanisms. He didn't want Kijima's fake smiles and intrusive advances that masked raw emotions. Kuzumai didn't hide his feelings in hopes that his vulnerability would allow Kijima to feel safe enough to express his. He wanted to see Kijima for who he was, not for who he pretended to be.

Kido wanted to know he always had Kijima and became possessive and jealous when others made Kijima happy. Kuzumi admired Kijima and was pleased when Kijima experienced happiness with others.

The closer Kijima got, the more alert Kido became and stayed awake because he couldn't trust himself. Kuzumi easily fell asleep with Kijima by his side.

Kido stopped writing because he believed he could never achieve Kijima's level of technique and skill. Although Kido loved his job, he was willing to transfer because of societal expectations. Kido needed to be seen as successful, which is why he couldn't give into his attraction to Kijima. Being in a relationship with a man made him feel lesser. Kuzumi didn't know what he wanted to do for a career and was aimless. He openly purchased the pornographic books without caring about how it would be perceived. He had a successful career, but it didn't matter to him, and he even skipped a meeting.

Kido and Kijima began in the light with an audience, and Kido never allowed that to happen again, only interacting with Kijima in the dark and behind closed doors. Kuzumi and Kijama began in the dark, but Kuzumi had only shown Kijima light and openness since then.

Kido was never happy when he was with Kijima. Kuzumi was always happy with Kijima. Kido would never love Kijima openly because of his need to be seen as normal. Kuzumi wanted to love Kijima openly because it was the only space he really felt normal.

As Kido stated in the last scene, the flame in Kido's heart that flickers for Kijima will never be extinguished, but Kido has proven that he is willing to burn Kijima if he comes too close. Kuzumi's love started as a flame but is now a raging fire. It cannot be contained, it cannot be stopped, and even though it is terrifying, it is a force of beauty.

#The Novelist #Mood Indigo #Kijima x Kuzumi #Kijima x Kido #The Pornographer #The Pornographer - Spring Life #The Novelist - Spring Life #This is going in the “favorites” folder #I don't know why it took me so long to watch these #Thanks CCP for giving me Izuka Kenta

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harurio · 7 months

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izuka kenta as hirado azuma in call boy, 2018.

#izuka kenta #hirado azuma #call boy 2018 #japanese actor #I WARNED YOU ALL. what can i say #i am not beating the constructing intricate rituals to stare at man with finger in mouth allegations #this is objectively the funniest role i've ever seen izuka kenta play to be clear #waltzes in. sucks the presumably het male lead absolutely stupid. gets him to pretty please snap his pinkie in half. is never seen again #(well he is but only at the very end and he seems fine)#i'm sorry this set sucks. almost as hard as he does (i'll show myself out)#but seriously potato mode viki + screentogif + gimp is being really unkind to my gif quality. if anyone has tips i would love to learn #izuka kenta my beloved #tw flashing #tw scars #id in alt

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kdramalands · 9 months

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year-end drama recommendation

2. Animals (2022)

8 eps, 45 min each

Animals follows the story of Umi, a brilliant but absolutely overworked TV production office worker, during the most difficult part of any adult's life — career change.

Umi is constantly overwhelmed with tasks passed to her by her "I'll only do what I'm paid for" co-workers and her only reward for picking up their slack is her boss's warm praise. Umi is made to feel like she is an irreplicable part of her team and her sacrifice is needed for the shows they produce to succeed. One day, Umi is so tired from working overtime she falls asleep during a live broadcast, which becomes a hot topic on the Internet. Her boss, who usually very kindly accepts Umi's free labour, shames Umi for her behaviour and vehemently urges her to release a statement to clear the air and to take the heat off of the company.

Umi, rightfully, decides to resign from the shitty job and applies for a position at a make up company recommended to her by a new friend. Her beginnings aren't easy as Umi was not particularly interested in make up before, but she's surrounded by wonderful people who don't give up on her. One of those people is Kazao, the company's main photographer. He's constantly advising her during difficult times. With time, countless bowls of ramen, glasses of beer, and a growing pile of advice, something romantic grows between them. Our main character gains confidence she needs for her job thanks to her indomitable spirit and the support of people around her.

The reason I picked up this drama was its' focus on make up market. I absolutely adore make up, I like to have fun with it, and I'm always happy when I buy myself a new eyeshadow palette. It was refreshing to see a show that focuses so much on it and honestly, it was quite nice to finally have expert knowledge on a topic presented.

I felt extremely proud when Umi made her first steps in using some of the company's products. I absolutely understand the insecurity women feel with make up, especially when they have no previous experience, e.g. because they never had an opportunity to play with make up in their teenage years. Society pressures women to always look good but doesn't give us space to practice and make mistakes. The little steps we make feel so much bigger and scarier when there's an expectation on us to always look put together. Messy mascara application, chunky eyeliner wing, or patchy foundation is assimilated with teenager clumsiness so it's met with disdain. To that I say: not every woman has to be a pro in the art of make up, next time just let her know the eyeshadow she picked brings out her eyes or her lip combo is looking especially good today!

Part 1 || Part 3

#animals #animals 2022 #アニマルズ #suzuki airi #honda kyoya #jin shirasu #hoshino yuna #murakami erica #izuka kenta #jdrama recommendation #drama recommendation #year-end recommendations #japanese drama #jdrama #drama #yer2023

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