Summary (official):
Nagisa is 17 years old and attends 2nd grade in high school. He is apart from his parents and lives alone in the seaside town of Fujisawa in Kanagawa. He is passionate about surfing and works at a bathhouse in a hostel on the island Enoshima linked to Fujisawa. Shun is the same age as Nagisa and visits Fujisawa for spring break. They meet and develop a relationship more than friendship. However, the surfing equipment store owner’s daughter, Chika, has been secretly in love with Nagisa.
My thoughts:
The first word that comes to mind when I think of this show is "beautiful." It's set in 2006 (or about that time--I can't remember exactly) in a small, beachside town where everyone knows each other, the teens go surfing, and everyone dresses in the most aesthetic clothing effortlessly. I don't know why, but I'm super, super in love with that early-ish 2000's intimate beachy setting. There is one gorgeous, gorgeous scene set on the roof of a building during a sunset, and the brilliant golds and oranges made me rewatch the scene several times just for the visual appeal of it. And the whole palatte of the ambience was even a sort of sandy color, too. I could talk about how much I love the whole setup all day. Consider me fully in love.
Besides the en pointe visuals, the actual characters and the storyline were epic, too. Nagisa, one of the main characters, had some pretty honest coversations about what it's like to realize and live with the fact that you're not straight that I definitely think would have been pretty shocking in 2006, when this is supposed to be set. I really appreciated that. Many BLs portray being gay as no big deal, and while I'm not denying that, for some people, it's not, for others, like me, it is. While I hope that societies worldwide continue to move towards normalizing not being straight, my reality with this matter was that everyone that ended up finding out I was bi was pretty shocked and initially a bit weird about it--exactly like what happened to Nagisa. While it's often times nice to pretend that the world is perfect and everyone will accept you no matter what, when too many show do, I feel like my story is missing in the media, and that feels bad. It was great to see my version of that narrative portrayed honestly in such a beautiful show.
Honest--an adjective that perfectly describes the show, even beyond the non-straight content. Chika's relationships with her parents was spot on with reality, and the main characters all interacted in ways typical of real teens, with no hyperbole or anything that I've never seen or done as a teen. It was refreshing to watch a show that seemed so real.
But let me tell you: the act of watching this show is not for the faint of heart, or faint of mind in technological savvy. I found only the first episode with English subs on a somewhat normal site after I realized the show was taken down from YouTube. I had to download the next three episodes separately from their English subs and find an app that compiles subs and video on Google Play to watch them. As for the last episode, 5, I'm pretty sure it literally does not exist for free on the internet with English subs (although you can get it for some amount of money on some person's Patreon (?) through the same weird-looking place you can find episodes 2-4). Somehow, I found that episode subbed in Hungarian on a random site, opened it on my laptop, and used Google Translate's real-time camera translator app on my phone to translate the Hungarian subs for a Japanese show into English, pausing the episode every five seconds when the translator got stuck. It was an absolutely wild ride, and it took twice as long to watch that episode than all the others. Oh, but it was so, so worth it. Yes, I adore this show that much.
This show has a sequel movie, where Nagisa and Shun have grown up, but I have not been able to find it on the internet anywhere, much less with English subs, thus far. If anyone wants to buy the DVD for me, let me know.
Lastly, Nagisa is gorgoeous. Do not try to change my mind.
SPOILERS:
The friendship between Chika and Ayo is absolute goals. Their "boy conversations" about both being jilted in the same way (#twinsies!) are probably the most realistic, but also the most funny (in retrospect) that I've ever seen on TV, BL show or not. They also remind me of me and my friends from high school. Gosh, I miss them!
Chika's parents and sex education... god, that was relatable. While the taboo that pervades our culture (or at least mine growing up) has definitely loosened compared to the past, it's still weird to talk about that stuff with your parents. Sure, my high school taught decent sex ed, and I talk about it whenever relevant with my peers, but, for me, any time this topic comes up with my parents I want to fall through the floor and disappear. Perhaps because my mom pretended that information did not exist until the end of high school, and then, all of a sudden, she began to give me unsolicited advice about sex at every possible opportunity, but regardless of why, the fact remains that it's weird. Chika's aggressive panic is understandable.
Shun is the most adorable human, and I love him. He doesn't talk very much and comes across as rather shy, but, somehow, he manages to be super expressive with just his eyes and opens up to Nagisa about his feelings in probably the cutest phrasing possible.
Ayo is probably the most mysterious character, at least in my eyes. It seems that everyone (except Shun, because he's just that sweet) sees her as nothing more than shy, but I feel like there's definitely much more to her than directly meets the eye, even to viewers. This is no dramatic irony--we're just as in the dark as to what goes on inside her head as the rest of the characters. I first noticed this when she dismissed her chuncky film camera as being only a decoy that she carries around as an accessory, and then used it to take pictures of Nagisa that she eventually developed, proving that she wasn't just clicking the button for fun. What was her motive for lying about whether or not it worked? And, when talking to Chika about the ironic twist of fate in which their crushes like each other, why did she say it was a comedy? Was she implying something more than bitter irony? And why was she taking acting classes, really?
This was one of the most vanilla BL shows I've ever seen--the only kiss was Nagisa awkwardly kissing Chika after being rejected by Shun (seriously, Nagisa, you can't just go around kissing people without explicit consent or at least a warning, and did you think about how used Chika would feel afterwards?!) But it didn't feel bland--they are high schoolers, after all, and my high school experience was nothing like Riverdale (see Chapter 27: The Hills Have Eyes), so it felt more genuine this way. And it was sweet enough without it.
Overall:
Rating? 10/10
Flavor? Vanilla
Watch again? Most likely, I just need to brace myself for the subtitle nightmare.
Recommend? YES! Good luck finding the subbed episodes though, unless you speak Hungarian.
No comments:
Post a Comment