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Lost Focus And Had A Consensual Workplace Relationship
16 Plays1 month ago
More takes on the office romance, now with bonus miscommunication! Ben, NiNi and Ginny talk Ayaka Is In Love With Hiroko and At 25:00 In Akasaka.
Episode transcript available here.
00:00 Welcome
01:16 Intro
02:52 Ayaka Is In Love With Hiroko
10:45 Ayaka: A Split Narrative
17:20 Ayaka: The Negatives
24:25 Ayaka: Final Thoughts and Ratings
29:08 At 25:00 in Akasaka
35:34 At 25:00 in Akasaka: It's the Characters for Us
43:18 At 25:00 in Akasaka: Hayama and Shirasaki
49:05 At 25:00 in Akasaka: Filmmaking and Production
53:25 At 25:00 in Akasaka: Final Thoughts and Ratings
58:45 The State of J-BL
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Transcript
Introduction with Hosts and Theme Overview
00:00:20
Speaker
Welcome to the conversation about BL, aka the Drunk Liquor Podcast. And there it is. I'm Ben. I'm Nini. We're your drunk, ripping uncle and auntie. We're sitting on the porch in the rocking chairs.
00:00:36
Speaker
Four times a year we pop in and talk about what's going on in the BL world. We shoot the shit about stories, all the drama going into them. I review from a queer media lens. I review from a romance and drama lens. So she like cracked out takes and really intense emotional analysis.
00:00:56
Speaker
If you like talking about artistry, industry, and the And we're back.
Guest Introduction and Japanese Show Focus
00:01:18
Speaker
This week, we brought along Jenny. Say hello again, Jenny. Hello.
00:01:24
Speaker
We are discussing Japanese programming this week. We're going to be discussing Ayaka is in love with Hiroko and at 2500 in Akasaka. We've got one show whose title I totally understand and one show that I am still confused by how the title relates to the show, but I incredibly enjoyed. it I feel that the common theme between these two shows was a little bit of Shall we see misunderstanding? There's definitely a situation of each person having a very firm and incorrect interpretation of the other person's intentions and motives in what seems to be a very obvious romantic pursuit. So if we're looking for common thread, I would say that's the strongest one.
00:02:14
Speaker
There's also the common thread of being engaged in a professional environment that discourages the immediate pursuit of a romantic relationship. That's true. They both have their career situations as distinct impediments in a way that not every workplace show does. I think that's the one that it works the most consistent for me because there are clear professional reasons why they shouldn't be pursuing the romance, at least at the outset.
00:02:43
Speaker
I like it.
00:02:52
Speaker
Let's start with Ayaka.
Analysis of 'Ayaka is in Love with Hiroko'
00:02:55
Speaker
Ben, what is Ayaka is in love with Hiroko about? Ayaka is in love with Hiroko is an office place GL series in which a young woman named Ayaka has been nursing a crush for quite a while on her supervisor team lead. Who is one of the coolest girls had in jail for a while and who has an excellent fashion sense. I immediately trusted her. I would work for her. I completely understood the team's full confidence in Hiroko. She was so cool and so steadfast and so gregarious about it. You could see people actively immediately relaxing.
00:03:42
Speaker
once they interfaced with her. I completely understood Ayaka's crush. Ayaka had originally presented at work in this very sort of stern, severe, pantsuit model and then decided to tailor her look to be more cutesy to try and attract Hiroko. The early parts of the show are dominated by the comedy of errors of Ayaka desperately trying to convey her feelings to Hiroko and Hiroko and intentionally reading that as straight girl bait the whole time, actively misreading all of Ayaka's desperate attempts to express her affection. and It was fun at the front end. that I was enjoying the comedy of watching Hiroko almost deliberately misunderstand what Ayaka was doing. is like She couldn't even hear it too. She's like, nope, nope, nope, there's no way.
00:04:38
Speaker
It made me think of all my lesbian friends and how they never believed that the girl who likes them actually likes them. It's true. She does not trust this dynamic because the problem with liking women as a woman is that there can be lots and lots of casual affection. Lots of, I love you so much. Lots of draping yourself all over your friend. And how are you supposed to interpret that?
00:05:02
Speaker
Watching Hirago wrestle with her very obvious horny responses to this and being like, I cannot do that. I cannot go there. I cannot allow myself to believe that this might be real because that way lies madness was very, very relatable. The Hijing Summit went on for about four solid episodes of escalation that got steadily more ridiculous. Like they go on a work trip and Ayaka has like,
00:05:31
Speaker
cheering in the background when the little gay hotel manager is like, oh, I'm so sorry. There's been a mix up with the rooms. We only have one room. And unfortunately it's the honeymoon suite. Sorry, but you guys are going to have to take it and because like raising her hands to the skies in the background because there's only one bed. And she had prepared for this moment by bringing the cutesy as horny as she could possibly put together.
00:05:59
Speaker
And where is it coming out of the shower? That whole hotel sequence was so funny. There are a lot of great hijinks, too, out of the rest of the office. Like, she was trying to flirt with Hiroko at the office, but the rest of the crew kept accidentally interfering by doubling down on what Aiko was doing, especially with this moment where she was trying to give Hiroko a massage because her shoulders were tensed up. Like, the whole office gets involved.
00:06:27
Speaker
That was such a funny moment because every time the camera pan back to the door, there were more people just standing in the door. Because everybody loves Heroko. It was so funny. I really liked the office hijinks and how the camera work and the direction was really amping up the office hijinks. It made it super funny, super entertaining. Heroko was clearly gay to us and we knew that she lived a very active, if private, gay life separate from work.
00:06:58
Speaker
There was this really funny potential early on because Ayaka's sense of queerness was very personal and extremely isolated. And Hiroko's was not because she was like a boob monster who was famous at the local lesbian spot for showing up at the age of 18. And then basically being a Brian Kenny of her local community.
00:07:26
Speaker
You're going to have to explain who Brian Kenny is for the babies. I will not. You will have to look it up. If you don't know, you better ask somebody. How am I supposed to explain 100 episodes? You know what? I liked the gay bar. I liked the characters at the gay bar. The one really femmy girl that Hiroko hates, and who hates Hiroko right back. They feel like exes. They've definitely hooked up. At least twice. The lesbian bar was probably my favorite thing about the show.
00:07:53
Speaker
I love seeing that kind of space that's so essential for real life queer community and just all these girls who know all of Hiroko's drama and history and will give her shit about it, but will also support her.
Exploration of Queer Spaces and Boundaries
00:08:07
Speaker
The one thing that was unrealistic to me is they should have clocked who Ayako was way sooner. No way are those girls missing that. When she shows up and they start to put the pieces together, they're putting them all together right away.
00:08:20
Speaker
But I love the whole dynamic and that we got to see a space like that where Hiroko can be her lesbian self with a bunch of friends who love her and give her shit in equal measure. So this is actually where the first disconnect with the show I experienced was Ayaka and Risa have realized queerness in each other and they decide to go to a local lesbian bar together and they end up at the bar Hiroko always frequents and I just don't know that I really liked them just talking about Hiroko like that to these girls who were clearly referring to Hiroko as Senpai and then later on telling more of Hiroko's business to these girls. That part threw me off because I don't see how her own people
00:09:15
Speaker
wouldn't be aware about how clear the line was for her at work and would chat about her like that with her juniors. I think that didn't bother me because of the outrageous comedy space the show already existed in. I wasn't expecting people to behave like real people because none of them do in this show. Everything's notched up. So the fact that that situation was created made sense for me within the genre space that I felt like the show was sitting in. I think it ended up sticking with me because after that error happens, they apologize to Hiroko and then later tell Risa even more stuff. And that's the part where I was like, okay, guys, come on. Check it because Risa was not on Hiroko's side in this at all. For me, they came down to like, this is a community space, but how well do these people actually know and like each other? They're
00:10:14
Speaker
in this space together, because they are who they are, but are they actually friends? I don't know. I feel like the closest thing that Hiroko maybe has to a friend at the bar is Mama, and that's the one that bugged me when Mama kind of got into the business a little bit, but the other girls at the bar, I could totally see them talking about Hiroko's business.
00:10:45
Speaker
I want to go to Jenny for a little bit here. You mentioned in the last response how you just sort of went with the show's absurdity. I want you to sort of talk through the way the show goes from Hiroko's straight girl reticence to the reveals about her past relationship with her senior and the way that affects the final arcs of this film. To me, it felt like a pretty coherent line.
00:11:14
Speaker
Once we saw what Hiroko's past had been, it made perfect sense to me that there's this other layer besides the straight girl danger refusal to consider that Ayaka really loves her. If she were to risk it and be wrong, that would be terrible. And if she were to risk it and be right, that would also be bad. Like there's no winning for her in this relationship because of her history, because she's already had this experience.
00:11:43
Speaker
with her senior that kind of showed her this kind of relationship, especially in the workplace, is simply not something that she can indulge in. I liked the show better as we got into the later half because as funny as the comedy is, it's really not my jam, the big hijinks. I was like, okay, this is a good joke, but it's the same joke. I'm not mad about it, but I'm not having as good a time. The struggles that Hiroko is having with who she is in her career, which she's clearly very dedicated to, and who she is in her love life, which she also is very secure in, the idea of merging those and becoming a whole person. The idea of decompartmentalizing those things was unthinkable to her and very, very scary. I liked it. It made sense to me. It worked for me as a character storyline. and
00:12:40
Speaker
For me, it felt actually quite disjointed. What was going on in the front half felt different from what was going on in the back half. Even if they felt connected, they didn't feel like the same through line. The straight girl thing that was happening at the beginning felt like one story. And then the stuff with Hiroko's former senior and the stuff that was happening at work around Hiroko potentially coming out or not coming out.
00:13:08
Speaker
It's not that it didn't feel of a piece, but it felt like two pieces. It didn't feel like one piece to me. So when they shifted from one storyline to the other, to me, it felt quite jarring. It made me wonder if this was adapted from a manga, because sometimes they try to Frankenstein two volumes of a manga together, and it doesn't quite work. So I was wondering whether that was what happened here.
Hiroko's Backstory and Narrative Enrichment
00:13:32
Speaker
To me, it really felt like two separate stories, not one hotel story. I struggled because ah I don't date straight girls, but feels like a separate part of her queer history from the, my beloved senior who I cared a lot about was a run out of the company because of rumors about us. Like I can maybe see the way the first is being used as a shield.
00:14:05
Speaker
to obfuscate the second, but I don't think the show really handed a baton between one to the other really well. I was also just really put off by the constant outing of Hiroko in the backend by people who I thought should have known better. I didn't like the Betty's at the bar outing her twice and I really didn't like Risa.
00:14:33
Speaker
revealing even more of Hiroko's business to Ayaka that felt like a real lack of weird solidarity which really rubbed in me the wrong way. On top of that there was weirdness with the way Hiroko shifted towards the end. I thought that weird breakup Kishida with Ayaka felt really mean and I was completely baffled by the I'm going to cherish her. So I won't have sex with him for over a year thing at the end. I'm like, they literally called her a boot monster. What is going on? That is my one beef with the show. That bit made me so mad and and knocked it down a good half point in my rating. First of all, I don't believe it. You have not been together for a year and not had sex. And if you're going to bring that in, you've got to resolve it, but no, okay, rude.
00:15:23
Speaker
I have to concur that if you're going to bring that in, you have to resolve it. What it felt like to me was the beginning of a third story, because like I was saying, all these stories felt connected. They feel like they come from something like the same place inside of Hiroko. And that feels like a place of guilt almost. There's these three manifestations of that. But the first one to me felt the most true. The second one didn't feel connected to the first one.
00:15:51
Speaker
And then this third one feels like it barely got started as a story before the story was over. That really hurts because your girlfriend is here literally putting on all the hot outfits begging you. And you're not going to do anything about it. Something's not adding up here. What's going on? You're a legendary boob monster according to the girls at the bar and you haven't touched her. What's happening here? And then the show ends. I wanted to see that play out.
00:16:17
Speaker
To me, it feels even like the first and third stories were better connected than the second story in the middle. The stuff that was happening at work probably felt the most jarring to me out of the three elements of the story that they tried to handle. If they had moved from the part where Hiroko walks into the bar and sees Ayaka and Risa there to the part where Ayaka is now openly pursuing Hiroko at work. Now that she knows that Hiroko isn't a woman and is potentially into her, putting extra effort into it. There's just a bit in the middle that for me just doesn't connect to those two things. And then the end feels abruptly cut off. I want to see more of what happens there. Why is this what she's doing? How is Ayaka going to deal with that? How are they going to deal with that together? I really wanted to know and then it just stopped.
00:17:20
Speaker
The outing shit I think was used poorly because I think it fits the classic sort of meddling hygiene stuff that other romantic comedies like to use. I don't think it works well here because it involves outing someone. And I don't like that being treated as like, ah well, this needs to happen so you can move this relationship forward sort of thing.
00:17:42
Speaker
I was really bothered by the implicit idea from the story at the end that Hiroko needs to get over her closet issues because the world has changed. I don't know that the show felt like it was respecting Hiroko a lot in the back third. Oh, kind of cruel to me. They did play that one a little fast and loose. I could see what I felt like they were trying to say. The message of the world has changed, you can be out, is one that I like to see. And I like the generation gap of, even though they're only a few years apart in age, how much things have changed from Hiroko's formative workplace years to Ayaka's. And I enjoy seeing that, but I agree that it was not
00:18:38
Speaker
handled gracefully and kindly. And it kind of felt like Heroko was being. I felt like she was being picked on for the entire half of the show. Yeah. It brought me to mind a little bit of She Makes My Heart Flutter, that generational divide between the aunt and the niece about how public to make the bar. One of the things that they did in that whole arc that showed me where they were trying to go with this but not succeeding was Hiroko and Yuya being in the meeting with the senior and the senior being sort of like oh it's so great that the kids feel comfortable to be out and then he sort of treats Kayaka's hitting on Hiroko as a phase treats the whole idea of woman loving woman as some kind of a phase that these little girls have to go through
00:19:33
Speaker
and That's the one part of that arc where I thought I could see clearly what it is that they were going for and trying to be like, well, no, Hiroko is actually right because as much as they've seen the world has changed, she's still dealing with this kind of attitude. I see what they were going for with it and they put some of the elements in there to make it clear what they were going for, but but inevitably it got muddled by some of the romance arc things, particularly the storyline with Risa. According to manga readers, they removed the arc where Risa and Ayaka earnestly attempt to date for a while, and realized that it doesn't work. Oh, they didn't have room to do that, but I like that as a storyline. Hold on, that arc just sent me. She said, Jenny said, now hold on.
00:20:30
Speaker
I'm sorry. You can continue. No, can I watch that show? One of the other things that I really liked about the show was their complicatedly emotional, never were dating breakup scene. That was very lesbian space. I did feel very lesbian. That's just everybody deep in their feels. They love each other so much.
00:20:59
Speaker
It's so tangled up, but they are certainly not going to separate from each other in any way. That is not what our people do. so I would like to see them do. They dropped this entertainment article in the back end of Hiroko's senior doing well at some other opportunity now. I would have really liked to see like a phone call or a mini reunion between them that would have allowed Hiroko to put that down so that she could advance forward. I kind of wish.
00:21:29
Speaker
that Hiroko had had a growth on her own about the specific things that was holding her back. and Also the specific resolution about standing up to guys like the ignorant senior who she was about to replace in that position. I just don't feel like her character got that in the back half of the show, which felt especially mean because She's basically just getting beat up and let down by all of her people. I guess she just won't be with Iyaka, but I feel like the show did a good job establishing why she didn't want to be with Iyaka for her own professional and personal safety and for Iyaka's personal and professional safety. And I don't know that Hiroko got resolution on how to manage her own fears and insecurities
00:22:27
Speaker
about real problems that will follow queer professionals. I don't feel like Heracle that much resolution about anything. And that was the thing that made me sad about the show. I actually would have liked it to continue. As much as it felt like it was messy, it felt like it had some of the right ideas. And I really did enjoy watching it happen, but it feels like a lot of the decisions that Heracle made were responding to outside stimuli and not really internalizing what's happening, how she's feeling, what she wants to do. A lot of it felt like it was responding to all this other stuff that was going on, things that her coworkers were saying to her and all of that. I think I could have used more episodes of this show. I know Ben is over in the corner like, she's no new friend, but I think that this show could have have stood to be longer. It feels like some of these ideas got cut off a little bit. I think there are definitely two more episodes in there.
00:23:28
Speaker
There's an episode of Ayaka and Risa trying to date and there's an episode of them trying to be girlfriends, Hiroko and Ayaka. I would have paid money to see both of them. The other thing, I would take like a three episode spin off of Hiroko's old senpai. Like we saw Hiroko for the first time, I was like, wow, she's so hot. And then we saw her sitting here and I was like, wow. i did and well I'm just instinctive to just fall in line behind any lesbian who wears an oversized suit that well. She clearly is in charge. I will do it whatever she needs to me to do. It was not. It was the hair. It was the nails. It was everything. It was such a clear type. I was just like, I know you miss. I know you so well. It was very good.
00:24:24
Speaker
Speaking of the co-workers, there was a lot of fun in them. Handa Kyoya was in this show. Yeah. He was clearly having a blast just hanging out on this set. They did not ask much of him, and he was clearly enjoying it. He just got to be the chillest, best little ally buddy. It was wonderful. I was so happy to see him. Handa's character Yu-Gi-Oh! walking in on Ayaka instigating Heroko Cabbadon was so fucking funny. He stumbles around the corner. He goes, oh, Cabbadon. And then he gives him an awkward thought. It was amazing. He just gave us exactly the little sprinkle of spice that we needed on top of this story. and All his reaction shots are hilarious. Some of the great work that I expect from Japanese background acting. I love the other senior who's about in the same class as Yulia.
00:25:23
Speaker
who was playing her little dating games all the time, accidentally giving Ayaka advice. I had a lot of fun with her. And then you had the boy who as soon as Ayaka announced publicly her desire to be a hero who was like, what? Arrival? No, I'm going to win. Oh, I love when men get weirdly competitive with lesbians. It's like, oh, sweetie, this is not going to go the way that you think it will.
00:25:50
Speaker
Overall, it was an entertaining show. It was a fun show. I enjoyed quite a bit of it. I think it got messy. I think it got muddled, but I don't think it is a bad show at all. There were prices that I was like, grumpy face, but I liked the show quite a bit. I liked it a lot. I'm now sorting my list to see if it's my highest rated GL so far, which speaks more to the quality of the other GLs we've gotten this year. Hello.
00:26:18
Speaker
I was going to say, I'm really glad she loves to cook. She loves to eat came out this year. So I don't feel like this is being meat. We're going to have to talk about this state of GL in the year in review because my God, we got a decent amount of it, but it's all been fucking weird. that she and I'm just hanging on to the belief that this is early growth and we're going to eventually get something good. All right. So let's write this bad boy or bad girl, I guess.
00:26:48
Speaker
na rat I gave it an 8. I think it was a good show. It's got some flaws to it, but I quite enjoyed it. I like Japanese comedies. I think that they can be quite funny, especially when they have an amped up sort of energy to them. I liked a whole lot about Ayaka and Hirako, the characters.
00:27:13
Speaker
And the way that they interacted, especially when Ayaka is really pursuing Hiroko very much enjoyed that. Jenny, rating. I gave it an 8.5. Pretty much everything Nini said, I really enjoyed it. The genre isn't my favorite, but I thought it was really well executed. Both lead actresses were great. I was taking everything in the spirit of this is a high jig sitcom.
00:27:41
Speaker
so a lot of the things that might have bothered me in a more serious tone didn't. Unfortunately, I was not in a forgiving mood about these things. My serious gripes with all of the outing and the mishandling of the Hiroko character are why I'm giving this show a four. Four, Ben, come on. I was super put off by it.
00:28:08
Speaker
The really solid execution around all of it feels kind of insidious for me. Hmm. Ma. Oh, does it work? Uh, it's like six point eight, so we can give it a seven. I feel like I want to pump that up to at least a seven and a half. Nope. I really had a lot of fun with aspects of the show, but I will not just hand wave the outing of the Hiroko character constantly by people who should have been protective of her.
00:28:39
Speaker
And I really did not like the way she treated Ayaka in the back half at all. And the whole I'm gonna cherish you by not having sex with you thing is the kind of weird purity stuff I really do. And so, no. So we have a split score of 4 and 8 range which brings us to a 7 from the conversation.
00:29:08
Speaker
On to the next show, 25G Akasaka B. Oh, I actually got that pronounced relatively correctly, I think.
Introduction to '25G Akasaka' and Character Dynamics
00:29:19
Speaker
At 2,500 in Akasaka. Ben, what is at 2,500 in Akasaka about? About how it's totally fine for them to do, I became the fake relative of B. I'll drop it twice in one year.
00:29:33
Speaker
25G is about a aspiring actor who gets his first big break to star in a BL across from a rising star actor and model who was part of his film club when he was in college. Some flexities come out of them working together because secretly his co-star has been nursing a huge crush on him for years and our protagonist is not that perceptive of it. and We have Shirasaki, our protagonist, trying to understand the interiority of his character and dealing with the difficult separation of his own feelings from his character's feelings, complicated by his hostar not being transparent
00:30:32
Speaker
about his own feelings. I fucking love this show. I'm gonna do the things that Ben can laugh at me. I love that Unreservedly. I love the characters of Shirasaki and Hayama. I ra i ah really enjoyed the way that the show was constructed, how we get those misunderstandings at the beginning between Shirasaki and Hayama.
00:30:57
Speaker
And then we get a moment where it all gets explained through a flashback, which my favorite use of a flashback. I love that the Japanese managed to pull off this people starring in a BL falling in love in real life thing twice in one year, once in drama and once in comedy. I really had such a great time with this show and I have been wanting to talk about it for months Jenny, initial reactions about how you felt about the show? They made this show for me. They heard all my prayers and read all my group chat messages and delivered the but actors falling in love while playing lovers story that I have been dreaming of and wanting for so long. ah What I love about this premise and what they delivered so well is the
00:31:54
Speaker
complicated interplay between the way art lets you express and release your emotions and the way doing that confuses you about what's really your emotions. They hit so many beautiful notes in that scale. I also really liked the show. I like when a character is holding back for valid reasons, but then it goes on too long. That's a really fun space for me.
00:32:25
Speaker
in romantic dramas. I think the Haima character was really enjoyable to watch for this. I also really like when in some of the reactions, the audience isn't certain about the motives of the person who's holding back. And you have to read into their behaviors to determine whether or not they're moving from a space of kindness or greed, maybe.
00:32:53
Speaker
I really enjoyed believing in Haima the whole time and being rewarded for that. I also really enjoyed that Haima had to face the consequences of his own actions. The break that occurs between them is well earned from Haima not being forthright with Shirasaki, who he admires for being such a forthright person.
00:33:23
Speaker
I thought that that landed really well. Like Jenny, I really like when the show navigates the complicated space that actors have to deal with when they're working in things like this. I'm going to jump a little bit ahead. There's the bed scene that they have to do for the show that they're filming within the show. And I really liked the show being clear about how unsexy a lot of that is. It is not.
00:33:52
Speaker
a romantic intimate space at all. It's awkward. And I'm really glad that the show captured that specifically, but then also played with it by doing a very stylish zoom in to put us in the perspective of the viewer who's watching this to further confuse us as the audience who has to do the mental work of separating the two. It was a really cool reminder.
00:34:20
Speaker
in the middle of a show that then later delivers its own sex scene. There's just so many moments in this show that blew my mind the end of the first episode where Hayama walks into the bar and he sees Shirasaki there, basically about to make a terrible mistake. He has walked into this gay bar and he's like, I'm just going to pick up any dude in here. And he's just like, well, let it be me.
00:34:50
Speaker
From that moment went on, I was hooked, I was obsessed. It was everything to me. You're right, that idea of Shirasaki being an unreliable narrator because the way that he's reading Hayama is not necessarily what Hayama is trying to do, but you as the audience member in that moment also can't read Hayama.
00:35:11
Speaker
You have a sense because of the genre you're in that maybe he's actually interested in him, but you don't know for sure. He could be playing with them. He could be playing with them. There's all these different things that it could be, but the moment has such amazing tension in it and you want to see what happens next.
00:35:36
Speaker
So Jenny mentioned that this was a premise that she's been hoping for for a long time. I want you to go through both of the leads and talk about what you enjoy so much about them separately and together as a pair. Both of them are people who struggle to connect with their own emotions. Shirasaki is very blunt and direct and forthright in ways that I think I saw even more clearly on rewatch after seeing him through Haima's eyes.
00:36:07
Speaker
Shirasaki doesn't realize how blunt he is and how that comes across to people. And the narrative through his perspective shows that he's never been in love. He doesn't really know what that's like. There's this incredible sequence where he's trying to get into the character, confessing his love for the first time, where he really has to process it.
00:36:31
Speaker
He doesn't struggle to connect with his own emotions, but he feels, I think, emotionally out of tune with what's considered normal for a lot of people, things like being in love. He just feels a little bit out of step, and comfortably so. But it takes him a while to find his way to, oh, this is what liking someone, what loving someone feels like. Hi, Emma.
00:36:57
Speaker
is very much out of touch with his emotions, and you find out exactly why when we get to his flashback. He's suppressed so many things, and he has controlled himself in so many ways, and it's acting that really lets him express himself. The first scene where they're just like, oh, you're a pretty face, come be on camera. And then what his character has to do is yell. My heart clutched. I relate to Haima.
00:37:26
Speaker
struggle to express emotions strongly. When I took an acting class, I challenged myself on purpose, giving myself a scene where I had to yell because I knew that was going to be very difficult for me. So that moment for Haima, I was like, oh my God, is he going to be able to do it? Is it going to be liberating for him? Is he going to finally be able to express anger that he's held in his heart for years and just never been able to say? And that is what happened. I was so happy. Both of them love acting. The craft and art of acting is so important to them both emotionally as well as in their career and a strong bond between them once they get over the misunderstandings it creates. I like how will they come at it from different sides. For Hayama, acting
00:38:20
Speaker
is not about putting something on, it's about taking layers off. It's about getting naked and being revelatory. He can only really be himself when he's pretending to be somebody else. Whereas for Shirasaki, it's more about putting on that persona, trying to get inside the mind of somebody else and then wearing that character. I really liked that juxtaposition for them. The very first sequence of the show is Shirasaki working in his food service job and being asked by a more shy coworker to tell a rude customer who screwed up his own drink to fuck off and that he wasn't getting a new drink. That told us everything we needed to about that character right away with his annoyance at people asking him to be confrontational with other people.
00:39:20
Speaker
You see how it frustrates him, and then the fact that he's able to be confrontational and no one else is kind of developing into the heart of the romantic conflicts is just a really beautiful touch. You watched it twice, Jenny. Do you remember when they had to film that confession scene? You sure Asaki was really struggling, and they had to come back the next day to film it, and so I am able to see him that night I really loved that episode so much. Even if Hayama isn't going to say how much he cares about Shirasaki and how important Shirasaki has become to him, I love that his way of helping Shirasaki and also managing his own crush was to just go take care of Shirasaki for an evening, make him feel like somebody gave a shit about him, to give him something to pull on for use in the character. Nihara does such a great job.
00:40:18
Speaker
playing an actor who's struggling, figuring that out with his time with Hayama, and then finally landing on that feeling in the end. That was such an excellent end to an episode. It's rare that I get to be like super fucking amped about the end of an episode. And I love that that happened early because it then gave us this interesting space to work with. What does he do now that he's realized that he's not just finding the feeling in the character for the other characters, finding the feeling in himself.
00:40:48
Speaker
for his co-star, who he thinks is just doing a solid by him. That final sequence and the way he tears up when he's saying it was so good. I like how that episode then goes on to connect to the flashback episode when you finally really get to see Hayama from Shirasaki's point of view, but also get to understand Shirasaki a little better by having that interaction with them back in college.
00:41:13
Speaker
He has never thought of the way that he thinks of Haima as romantic until those moments in episode three when he really starts thinking about it. He had this intense connection to him back in college. and It didn't exactly go both ways. It was more that he was so intently focused on him and he felt very strongly that he was this talent and that he needed to be a person who was on screen acting because he did it so well, but he didn't make that connection from that to the romantic feelings that he was feeling. Even when Haima comes back into his life, when he realizes now what he's feeling for Haima is romantic and it starts connecting back to all that stuff that happened in college. It really resonated for me as a full circle moment for them. And I really like how the show structured that.
00:42:09
Speaker
There's this amazing haul back. The first time you see Haima's face, he's doing this model shoot. He's posing, he's looking good, he's handed a bottle of water, everything's great. And then you see Shirasaki waiting across the street and looking at a billboard of the result of that shoot. Some girls by him are saying, look at him, look at how beautiful he is. And Shirasaki gets pissed.
00:42:34
Speaker
He's mad because this guy is a wonderful actor and he feels that strongly and he wants him to be recognized for that, but he is doing this, I'm just a beautiful face thing because that's where the industry has put him. And then when we get into Hayama's point of view, we see that shoot again. And it's very clear at that point that Hayama feels the same way that he is.
00:42:59
Speaker
let go of something to be here and to do this glamor modeling thing. It's so tight and so resonant in all the images and moments that it repeats.
00:43:18
Speaker
You've watched it twice, Jenny. I want you to walk us through the good-bye sex that Shirasaki thinks he's having. to his leaving and then Hayama coming after. They've wrapped on the show. They had an incident in the previous episode before filming their sex scene where Shirasaki yeah came onto Hayama and they made out a little bit and then Hayama was like, no, I can't do this. So Shirasaki is still locked firmly into this, you like someone else, which he has very good reason to believe.
00:43:55
Speaker
He knows Haima likes someone and he thinks that it can't possibly be him because it's been going on for so long. So they're saying goodbye and Haima keeps kind of extending invitations for him to stay, but not really being explicit that he wants Shirasaki to stay. And Shirasaki is about to leave when finally Haima stops him. First he pulls him into a hug and Shirasaki slowly accepts the embrace and accepts that, okay, Haima wants some kind of connection with him here. So they go upstairs and they have sex. And Shirasaki says, I love you. Hayama does not say it back in that moment. I think in Hayama's mind, his feelings are so clear and so strong that he doesn't need to say them and he doesn't know how to say them. But he accepts it warmly and they keep having sex and they cuddle and it's beautiful.
00:44:52
Speaker
And then the next morning, Shirasaki leaves because he's still so locked into what he believes is happening, which is that Haima is hung up on someone else. And for whatever reason, he wants to have this connection with Shirasaki, but it can't mean anything significant. And he decides he can't do casual. He can't do a one-time thing. He can't sit with that. So he leaves.
00:45:19
Speaker
thank goodness Haima runs after him and they clear it up in a great little scene. I appreciate that this happens after the show is over and they're not co-workers anymore because one of the things I think that Haima is holding on to and the reason that he doesn't see what he needs to see the Shirasaki right until the very end is that he doesn't know how Shirasaki feels about him. And you don't want to be that guy who has the weird crush on your co-worker and makes everybody uncomfortable. I feel like that was part of but What was happening? So while yes, in some ways it's sort of this traditional Japanese misunderstanding or Japanese silence that I struggle with in taking a Japanese drama, it didn't bother me here because for me, it made sense that these two were not talking to each other about their feelings. It made complete sense to me why Hayama wouldn't say anything and why because Hayama wasn't saying anything, why Shirasaki would keep all these things to himself as well.
00:46:17
Speaker
It's also not a traditional workplace. A set is a weird place. Your emotions have to get involved when you're acting in some ways and you have to be able to regulate yourself. And so there's also that issue of them both wanting to be professionals about this. I really enjoyed how would the show let that play out and how it got messy because of that, but they were only able to resolve it after the show was over and that stuff isn't hanging over their heads anymore.
00:46:48
Speaker
Yeah, it's so much more than being coworkers because their emotions have to be engaged with each other. They have to have these really intimate and vulnerable performances with each other and acting is such an intense space. You could be disastrous for either of them to confess while they're filming and to have that suddenly throw off the whole balance and the dynamic and the chemistry of this show that they both really want to succeed.
00:47:16
Speaker
So yeah, it's one of the few misunderstanding of this type that is fully justified by the circumstances for me. I think one of my favorite things about Hayama was how he genuinely wanted to get to know Shirasaki. I really liked the way he instigated the let's fake dates so you can get some experience thing to let Shirasaki draw up a list of dates he wanted to go on.
00:47:44
Speaker
I like that he was gently asking, how do you want someone to treat you? It was so sweet. As obscure as Hayama is as a character until we get his flashback, we do get bits. When they've had that scene after the first meeting and table read, it's very clear that Hayama retains an impression of Shirasaki much more strongly than Shirasaki thinks he would.
00:48:14
Speaker
And he's kind to him. There's this interaction with their other coworker where Hayama can tell immediately that Shirasaki has taken some light teasing in a bad way, and he immediately works to reach out and soothe him and say, I think that was his way of being friendly or trying to tease. And then at the end of their first date, when Shirasaki finally calls him Asami-san,
00:48:42
Speaker
Hyama's face is so subtly illuminated with joy at that. It gave me chills to watch. It's so beautiful. ah So you can see what he feels, even though he's delivering everything in this incredibly held back way. It's so good.
00:49:06
Speaker
Since Jenny is here, let's talk about what did you eat yesterday today and how Hayama lives in Kokonada's apartment.
Artistic Elements in '25G Akasaka'
00:49:15
Speaker
Oh my god. That is a great segue. You know, I always enjoy talking about Japanese set design and set dressing. I want to talk about Hayama's house and Shirasaki's apartment, because to me, they're just so them. Hayama lives in this big, very modern, very stylish house that's
00:49:40
Speaker
so empty. Doesn't have a lot of stuff in it. There's all this negative space in his house and all these dark corners. Shirasaki's place is much smaller and more compact but it doesn't feel very homey either. It feels like a place that he's putting his body in but not somewhere that really feels like home.
00:50:08
Speaker
Whenever they're in each other's spaces, they instantly feel more homey. Shirasaki is there in Hayama's place, the lights get brighter and warmer, and he's taking up space in a place where there's all this negative space. When Hayama comes over to Shirasaki's house, again, the place feels warm and it starts to feel more likely if somebody living there and not just somebody staying there. It's something that they've done with the lighting, but it really resonated to me.
00:50:37
Speaker
One of the first things that I mentioned when I started talking about the show with you guys was how much I enjoyed the camera work. All this is all of a part of it. I also loved that once again, we got a Japanese apartment where someone had a big TV and it got used. Huge win. Penis devoted to the big TV life.
00:51:03
Speaker
Okay, he is a film critic. He needs to see things on the big screen. Not a huge W for me. Not only did they finally use that big ass TV that I've seen across one or two yesterday for two seasons, but we also got to see them enjoy it. I was so happy. It was cool seeing that apartment from different angles and we got to go upstairs. I've been wondering what the upstairs of that apartment looked like. While we're talking about going upstairs in the house and seeing the bedroom and that area of the house. Well, let's talk about the camera movements that took us there. You and I talked about this a little bit when we talked about Tokyo and April is. One of the things that sometimes puts me at a little bit of a remove from the Japanese dramas is static camera. Sometimes it works really well for what the show is. And sometimes I'm just antsy to watch the camera move.
00:52:00
Speaker
In this show, the camera moves. It takes you on a journey with the characters. So going upstairs into the bedroom in Haima's place, that's a journey that the camera takes you on in a way that I have not seen in a lot of Japanese drama. Personally, that is a style that I really enjoy. The sweep of the camera, the use of the space, the use of a light, the use of sound and music.
00:52:27
Speaker
the use of all the locations when they actually go on location to shoot the shows they've got this little cafe and this outdoor garden space and the way that they filmed them really worked get you inside the characters emotions get you inside the characters heads when they're in these spaces It was a really satisfying show. I thought it was really cool seeing a show that people were initially worried about because it felt like it had the same sort of premise as I became the main role of a BL drama. I was worried at first that it would feel trite, but I really liked that those shows feel very distinct from each other. They're very much each their own thing, each wonderful, but yeah, telling completely different stories, even though if you summarize in three sentences, they sound identical.
00:53:25
Speaker
I want to talk a little bit about Yamase because we haven't talked about Yamase at all. We talk about how Yamase was auditioning for the role of Japanese payu. The character of Yamase, I really appreciated his role in the story and how he was really gung-ho. He's like, look, I got bills to pay. I got things to do. I'm going to do my best with this role.
00:53:50
Speaker
They want me to be the one who comes in here and really puts a wrench in the thing between the two characters. I'm going to do that on and off set. I think his character worked really well because the show wanted to reiterate that this is fiction and we're having fun. But on the real, this is what it looks like when a costar is being really aggressive about this sort of stuff, where he was forcing closeness with Shirasaki by using his given name, even though he was saying, don't do that. And then trying to Mack on him outside of filming, it was supposed to read as aggressive and unwanted and uncomfortable. And I really liked the show, letting the audience consider that like, yeah, we're going to be ah having a great time with these two guys. But also this is what it possibly looks like outside of this to the people who have to work with them and take care of
00:54:48
Speaker
And it shows you again, like this is what neither of them want to be. This is part of why they're both being so careful not to reveal their actual feelings. Ben talked earlier about how the sex scene of the characters inside the VL drama that is being filled inside the field. oh Oh, that sex scene was filmed where they did the push in to put you inside the moment and then they pull back out.
00:55:12
Speaker
to show you all the stuff that was going on on set while this is happening. They did a couple moments like that in the show that I found were really effective. And one of those moments is Yamase being really, really aggressive with Shirasaki, where he's sort of looming over him and he pushes him up against the wall and he makes out with him. At first instance, you aren't quite sure whether that's a moment in the BL drama they're filming or a moment in the show.
00:55:41
Speaker
the camera deliberately wants to confuse you occasionally to make you think, this is okay in fiction, but why would we think this would be okay in real life? Or why would we think this would not be okay in real life? It's about making the audience really stop and think about their own immersion in these stories and about what it must be like for the actors. They played a lot with the ambiguity of the camera in that particular episode with both the kiss scenes,
00:56:11
Speaker
with Hayama and Yamase, where you see, in one case, a mutually agreed-on practice kiss, and in one case, one that Yamase is really trying to push for, you get a few back and forths of reality, which does everything that you said, Nini, and also, I think, really underlines the emotional complexity when it's Hayama and Shirasaki's kiss of their having this experience together And neither of them is fully clear on what feelings are real and what feelings are acting. It's muddled up together in a way that feels very true to where the characters are both at emotionally at that point. I love actors on actors. It's one of my favorite genres of drama, film, whatever it is. This is an incredible execution of actors on actors. Genuinely, I think
00:57:08
Speaker
Nihara who plays Shirasaki gives a really, really excellent performance. I think he had a really difficult task with this character and I thought he did a really good job. No shade of any sort to the work of Majin Akita who played Haima. He does a great job too and they worked really well together as a team. But I was really impressed with Nihara really stand out performance this year for me.
00:57:36
Speaker
Yeah, I give it to Nihara. Like you said, no shade. I have to equally give it to Kamujinakita because Hayama is a difficult character. He's so internal. It is such a hard thing to get his interiority across in a way where he maintains that mysterious and reserved, but you can also feel something else underneath the surface. I thought it was an excellent performance. We could probably keep gushing about this production, but let's rate this sucker.
00:58:06
Speaker
Nanny. Oh, come on, Bastino. It's a 10. Jenny. It's a 10. I have it as a nine, five on my MDL, but I wrote a 10 in my initial notes. I don't remember what I was angsting over. It's funny because I had it as a nine, five. And then when I went back to rewatch it, I was like, why? It's a 10. I'll stick with my second rating of 9-5 but we'll give it a 10 from the conversation because we loved it so much going back through two of these now what can we see about them and the theme that we think that these two share these are two shows where
00:59:00
Speaker
For various reasons, the couple was facing professional barriers that kept them from each other. Here's a real question for Jenny. You mentioned when we were coming into the end of last year, how you were starting to gain an appreciation for some of the Japanese shows. Where are you sitting with your feelings about Japanese shows reflecting on these two in particular? I still think when The Japanese shows do well. They do better than almost anyone else. Just stellar, across the line, top notch work. One of the reasons I remember being so wowed by Japanese BL at the end of last year is that every one of them had been good. And they've been a lot more mediocre or bad Japanese GL and BL shows that I've watched this year. So I'm less feeling like, well, if I show up to one, I know it's going to be solid.
00:59:58
Speaker
One thing I've learned is that I need to binge them. Watching week to week is a much more frustrating experience, partly because of the episode length. Just 20 minutes once a week is not enough story. I'm always wanting more and frustrated. 25G, I think I did watch in real time because it's so dense and every episode is so packed with material that it really was satisfying week to week, but that's the exception instead of the rule for me.
01:00:29
Speaker
I have to concur with you on the binging. When it comes to the shorter shows, Japanese shows, Korean shows especially, I find it easier to binge because of the length but also because those stories are written in such a way that the week between feels incredibly long but also almost unnecessary. I don't find myself most of the time needing to sit in a Japanese episode or a Korean episode the way that I found myself needing to sit in some other shows is and like you, I found 25G to be an exception to that at the end of an episode of 25G I needed to take a breath and really unpack a little bit what I had taken and I found it lingering with me over the course of the week I will continue to be watching them as they release that's what I do baby
01:01:27
Speaker
That is a feature and auto bug for me. I am very glad that the state of the genre calls for multiple Japanese entertainment outlets to be engaged in making a lot of stuff. I like or don't like the Japanese show. I never have nebulous feelings about it. I'm never searching for what really worked or didn't work. It's always a very clear choice that the show made.
01:01:57
Speaker
that either worked for me or really did not. And I like that I can always hone in on exactly what I want to say about these shows. And I can point to the specific moments where the breakdown or uplift heard. That continues to be, I think, my favorite aspect of watching the Japanese shows. Thank you for joining us, Jenny. Thank you for having me.
01:02:24
Speaker
That is going to wrap us up on, what are we calling this episode? I have a placeholder name as usual. The placeholder name is Japanese Telephone. We're not calling it that. We are absolutely not will give a much better name than we actually voted. So with that, we out. should Say bye to the people, Jenny.
01:02:54
Speaker
Bye-bye! Say bye to the people, Ben. Peace!