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On Time And Memory

AND WE'RE BACK!

This week we're doing a thematic comparison about how our memory of the past impacts how we perceive our present. In a surprise for us both, we had a lot of positive things to say about Krist Perawat. We're talking about trauma and how we connect to wounded characters this week with Tokyo In April Is... and Be My Favorite.

Timestamps

The timestamps will now correspond with chapters on Spotify for easier navigation.

00:00 - Welcome 01:16 - Intro 03:10 - Tokyo In April Is... 11:01 - TIAI: Comparisons with the manga 14:15 - TIAI: Strength of execution 26:23 - Be My Favorite 34:00 - BMF: The time travel mechanic 44:47 - BMF: Dings 52:57 - BMF: Jittirain and Gawin and Krist 01:00:58 - Outro

The Conversation Transcripts!

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01:16 Introduction

Ben

And we're back.

NiNi

Welcome, welcome, to our On Time and Memory episode. And why are we calling it On Time and Memory? Well, we're back in the second chance romance space. And when we're in second chance romance space it always ends up somehow being time fuckery versus head fuckery. So [laughs] what are we talking about this episode? We're gonna talk about time fuckery in Be My Favorite, and headfuckery in Tokyo In April Is…

Ben

I think for both of these shows you have characters who are emotionally stunted by their feelings for each other that they don't deal with for years. In Tokyo In April we have a story about two boys who were very close in high school, and a troublesome event separates them, and they don't run into each other again for…ten years. And there's a lot to unpack in the trauma between the two of them that we'll get into in the episode. With Be My Favorite, we have a young man who, approaching 30, isn't really doing anything and is still caught up in his bullshit from when he was in college. Until a magical McGuffin allows him to go back in time to college and re-experience some of these events—with a very strict time travel mechanic that I really liked how it was used.

Both of these shows offer us some interesting things to talk about with how we perceive the events around us, and how that tends to linger with us and inform who we become.

NiNi

Okay so let's dive right in.

03:10 - Tokyo In April Is…

NiNi

And now we're going to talk about Tokyo In April Is... Ben, what is Tokyo In April Is… about?

Ben

Fundamentally, at its core it seems to be a show about nostalgia? But the description of the setup is, this young man named Takizawa Kazuma is returning to Tokyo after being away for ten years. He left at the end of middle school, finished his studies in America, and is returning to Japan as a pretty well-trained human resources professional and is joining some sort of company that's got office space in a tower. There he runs into another guy who's his age named Ren, who was his friend when he came back to Japan originally when he was a teenager, and they haven't seen each other in ten years. We learn over the course of the show that they were each other's first big loves, and they were each other's first experience sexually. But that encounter ended on a rather sad note for them as Kazuma ended up sick—had to be rushed to the hospital. The relationship became public knowledge to their families, and then Ren was summarily disowned by his family, kicked to France, and forgotten, only to eventually return to Tokyo.

The two of them have a difficult way to go because Ren doesn't want to talk about what happened when they were 15, and Kazuma—who had a horrible bout with pneumonia and I believe meningitis?—he ends up not really remembering what happened after that night. He and Ren end up in an intimate situation, and Ren establishes a friends with benefits arrangement for them. And Kazuma decides to be patient with this so Ren can work through what he needs to as the two of them become closer.

Ren also gets involved in a very Me Too era storyline with his work, where one of the women that he works with discloses that she was a victim, and that another member of the team was recently victimized. That the perpetrator has been preying upon the female staff at the company for over a decade. Two like really big threads in the show and I got a little bit lost towards the end there. But, the core of the show is about the…I guess it's sort of a second chance romance? Between Kazuma and Ren.

NiNi

I think we came down on opposite sides of this one, so I want to let you go first. How did you feel about it? What was your take on the show?

Ben

Overall I ended up liking this show a lot—and I tend to like shows that hearken specifically to things that I think are distinctly queer, also distinctly very male queer, because despite how femme our friend group is [laughs] and how many femmes are on Tumblr, I watch BL because I am a gay man who likes stories about gay men. And so I really connected to the youth portion of the story, where both of them were in love with the other, but couldn't conceive of a reality where the other boy also liked them back. And I really like how earnest that felt? Maybe I'm projecting a little bit of the manga onto this, I think it's a little more explicit in the manga, because we get more internal monologues? But I really like how that felt. The reality of that being snatched away from them at 15 was also something I connected to, having something really special and then having it basically ripped from you. In my case by circumstance, but them by being literally outed.

And then when they get together as adults again, I really appreciate Kazuma’s patience with Ren. I think it's very difficult sometimes to care about someone who's clearly suffered—and you'd like to help but it isn't necessarily your problem to solve or your angst to unpack? Sometimes you just have to love someone very firmly, until they start to settle down a little bit. And I also really liked Ren's friend Ryunosuke, who he met when he was in Paris. I really liked in episode…7? Seven, when he reads Kazuma for filth—because he can't conceive of a reality where Kazuma doesn't understand what happened to Ren. It's less of a thread in the show, but Ryunosuke and Ren identify as gay, which carries political connotations. Kazuma doesn't necessarily think of himself as queer in any way, and so as a result he doesn't seem to consider the social, economic, and political ramifications of being gay, and how that impacts his feelings for Ren. Ryunosuke has been with Ren for ten years, has cared about Ren, has tried to be more than just friends to Ren, unsuccessfully, multiple times—that's text. And he hates Kazuma because this is the person who is the source of this huge knot that's got his friend locked up. And when you meet Kazuma, you understand instantly why Ren likes him. If I were Ryunosuke I would hate Kazuma even more [laughs] because he's so likable.

NiNi

[laughs]

Ben

You would almost want Kazuma to be a selfish prick who didn't appreciate what Ren gave up for him. But the fact that Kazuma is so earnest and gorgeous and naive and kind, makes you hate him even more because you can see what Ren may have been trying to protect. And he succeeded! Oh, I would hate that so much!

[both laugh]

Ben

And so I really, genuinely loved Ryunosuke’s confrontation with Kazuma about that. I also really liked their domesticity. Because Japanese BLs are always using food as a love language. Food is love is a very common theme, especially when you have so many tsundere seme types, or even ukes who can't necessarily say the things that need to be said, but they can make a mean souffle. Ren doesn't have cooking skills. He's so stunted by what happened to him that he is missing love languages. The only thing he can really do is quality time and physical affection, but even then he's super restrictive about it with his rules.

I enjoyed a lot of the gay shit in this that sticks with me.

11:01 TIAI: Comparisons with the manga

NiNi

Okay, so here's a question. I did not read the manga, manga's not really my thing, but you read the manga before you went into the show. Do you think that that influenced your experience of the show in any way?

Ben

The simple answer is yes? It's kind of hard not to…when you know the story, you're watching it differently. And that's true for anybody who read source novels watching adaptations, or saw the original work when it's been adapted to another language or something. Your prior familiarity does impact your viewing experience. I will say in the case of Tokyo In April Is…the show is better, significantly. Whatever I would rate the show, it is a full point higher than I would rate the manga. The manga…is, one, way more erotic, and it uses eroticism kind of poorly sometimes? And there's one particular one that is extremely distasteful. There's other really tactful changes they made to the source material. Some of it was just moving the reveals of certain information around for better coherence.

I think the show is significantly better than the source work. Not in a way that makes me want to say the source work is bad, but very much when they were adapting they were like, [laughs] ‘we have to move some of these pieces around and restructure some of this.’ Some of the stuff when they were kids is far more explicit. They have to say it because they're not relying on the actors to deliver it. So Kazuma being as in love with Ren as Ren was with him is far more legible in the manga I think? And, like that scene on the roof where they're talking about having girlfriends: Kazuma in his own internal monologue in the manga says he's just going to say what straight people are supposed to say, because he thinks it would be embarrassing to admit how much he likes Ren. I don't think that's as legible in the show. Unfortunately.

NiNi

Yeah, and it's strange because the show does use internal monologues, so I'm not sure why it wouldn't have used internal monologues to get those bits across.

Ben

There's this weird dynamic with trying to be a little bit subtle about certain things? Less explicit sometimes about the queer stuff—with the main couples—that I don't know what the party line is on this, because they didn't have a problem doing with Ryunosuke, but he doesn't have any romantic potential, so they can say it for him. He can say the thing, because he's not getting anybody's booty in this show, so whatever. But like there's a whole thing with Kazuma and Ren that was only alluded to in the show.

I think the young actors are fine, but I don't think that they necessarily conveyed on their own, the missing bits of the internal monologue that I think should have been voiced over.

14:15 TIAI: Strength of execution

NiNi

Yeah. And that's kind of my whole thing with the show? So, Ben and I, I think, fell on opposite sides of this particular one. I thought that this was written really well; I am not sure that it was performed well. Or performed in a manner that grabbed me, let's put it that way. Intellectually I feel the tragedy of the story, but I'm not feeling any of it? And I think the performances had something to do with it, and I think a little bit of it was the staticness of the direction. This is the same team that did Our Dining Table, which is also based on a manga, but that show does not feel as static in the direction as the show does. Sometimes the whole manga styling, it works for me—they linger on a shot and it's very clear that that was like, a full page panel, or something like that? Sometimes that works for me with Japan, and sometimes it doesn't.

Some of the times that it's worked for me have been, like, Our Dining Table and What Did You Eat Yesterday? But then there are times that it didn't work for me, like here, and The Pornographer. It's the same kind of like static direction, but the acting is not coming through in the same way as it did in Our Dining Table and What Did You Eat Yesterday? I felt at an emotional distance the whole time I was watching the show. It was very clear what I was supposed to be feeling, because the writing's very good. It's partially the staticness of the direction, but it's really the fact that the actors aren't acting through that direction.

To be fair, when I'm talking about Our Dining Table and What Did You Eat Yesterday? I’m talking about Iijima and Inukai, talking about Uchino and Nishijima, these are top tier actors. These actors are very new. They've clearly been through the training, but they didn't bring out, for me, the emotionality that I would expect to get in a story like this—because this is a very tragic story. It's a tragic story with a happy ending, which is nice, but I neither feel the tragedy nor the joy. I can see that I'm supposed to feel it. The writing is telling me that I'm supposed to feel it. But I'm not feeling it, it's just not hitting for me, I wasn't getting enough of the inner from the performances. And it wasn't coming through in any other way. So if I'm not getting the inner from the performances I have to get it in some way, through a dynamism in the direction, or something in the set design, and I didn't get it through any of those means that I would normally use to soak up a vibe from a show? I wasn't getting that normal kind of pull that I would that I would usually get, that would suck me into something. Objectively it's good, but it didn't touch me? The production did not capture the depth of the story, for me.

Ben

I like Japanese static framing, because sometimes I think you have to just sit in whatever situation you're in. And sometimes that's really fun, like all of the fun eating around a table in What Did You Eat Yesterday? or Our Dining Table. Sometimes it's not fun. When you're watching Kazuma respect Ren's boundary, not asking a question that needs to be answered in a show like this. I totally see what you mean with the set design, about how things feeling kind of generic and bland. But I also feel like that's sort of the point, like, Kazuma is recently back in Tokyo. And the very first thing I thought about his place was that it was too big. But I feel like that's also the point. Missing part of himself because Ren has been gone for so long, and he's willing to provide so much space for Ren. I liked the use of earth tones in the few things that he did have, to ground his place and make it feel more alive than Ren's own place, which was so forgettable.

NiNi

Yeah, this is what I'm saying: normally in Japan, the set design, it pulls you in, the sets say so much about the characters.

Ben

But I feel like that's the point here! The lack of definition from their physical spaces is part of the point, that they're both so ungrounded. With Kazuma’s space in particular…the whole domestic episode of theirs, we kept calling it the What Did You Eat Yesterday? homage episode—but that also feels like sort of the point. That Kazuma is trying to model what he hopes will be helpful for Ren.

NiNi

I just feel like, if it's intentional, then when things shift between them, that it should then change. Because I could have bought the sterility of both of their places at the beginning of the story as intentional, and demonstrating how stuck they both are, that they can't even extend themselves to their surroundings because they're stuck in this moment that happened ten years ago. I could buy that as an argument. But then when they become unstuck, I feel like I want to see that reflected in some way. The story doesn't get there, because when they're moving in together, we only see like the barest bit of their place, and it just looks the same.

So I can take your point and buy your argument, but then to me, they missed a trick towards the end of the show by not making it clearer that now they are unstuck, and their lives can begin, and their lives together can begin, so their surroundings should start to match the new vibe that they're building together, to me anyway.

Ben

I do get that, I just don't know that I want them to do that in either of their apartments. Because both of their apartments look and feel temporary to me. And I'm really okay with the show starting where we began, with Kazuma on the street reminiscing about Tokyo, with the reveal that now he's with Ren and they're walking off together, and now they can casually talk about their time as teens. I'm okay with them completely starting over.

Like I take your point. It just didn't bother me because of how it instantly read to me. Like everything seemed off, and that felt intentional.

NiNi

When we were talking about this a little bit earlier you brought up pulps. Because you know how I feel generally about the pulps. I'm most familiar with the Thai pulps and the rhythms of the Thai pulps, so I can point to a Thai pulp and be like ‘that's a pulp.’ But normally you have to like, guide me into realizing that something from somewhere else is a pulp, because I don't have the same familiarity with the rhythms. This now, you described it as a Japanese pulp, and I had to sit with that for a minute, because I'm like ‘oh okay, is this what it is, is this what I'm feeling?’

Ben

We talked about this a little bit. This is not me reading you, don't take it as such.

NiNi

Why would I ever? If you're going to read me, you're going to tell me you’re reading me.

Ben

I will read you on this podcast, but I’m not reading you here. I just think, like one of the things that I've gotten used to as a queer cinema viewer is: we don't get big budget money, we don't get big actors in our stuff. And if we do, it's like, ‘this is their formative work! Look how bad they were in 1992!’ I get used to a certain raw quality or newness with these actors? And I am not put off by it. I appreciate that they were willing to do the work, and I appreciate when they take the work seriously. Like at no point do I think that Sakurai Yuki and Takamatsu Aloha are afraid of each other. And afraid to play two men who are into each other. And I have felt that from Japanese actors…we get the sense that they're not necessarily comfortable working with their male co-star. I did not feel that here from these guys, I just felt inexperience. And I don't begrudge people the experience they don't have. I care about the work that they're trying to do.

This is a very poignant story about a very specific kind of relationship, that I think is fairly familiar for a certain type of queer viewer who has dealt with familial homophobia and the consequences of being discovered at a young age? Something else the show did that the manga didn't—the manga doesn't do much develop Kazuma’s despair at Ren leaving, and it's one of the things that I really like in the show, because he was very strictly adhering to Ren's rules…about not asking questions that Ren didn’t want to answer, obeying the rules about their intimacy, even though Ren was modifying them, breaking them or changing them on the fly. And you can see how he turns into this shell of himself because Ren's gone. That was so well done, the manga does not develop that at all.

NiNi

Ben's like, ‘inject the sadness directly into my veins!’ [laughs]

Ben

I need to know these gay boys have been through the suffering! And the knowing, it's my favorite part. There's also the mom. The mom is way better in the show. There's a bitterness about the whole resolution with the mom, that is correct in the show. In the manga they make it seem like…it's almost comedic that she separated them for ten years? The conversation she has in the show with the other woman, about how strong their love is and how special it is and why she separated them? Yeah, she has that with the boys in the manga. I hated that shit. I'm so glad she had that conversation away from the boys.

The show is better. I gave the show a 9, I would have given the manga like an 8.

NiNi

It’s hard for me to talk about this show because intellectually I got it, but I still felt mid about it. It is well done. It's well written, it does not look cheap. They put work into the show. It's very clear that everybody from top to bottom on this production put the work in. But it didn't hit me.

Ben

It’s okay, I think, for a viewer to recognize the quality of a story, the intent of a story, but to not necessarily personally connect to it.

NiNi

So you gave it a 9, I would say…objectively it's a 9 show, I would agree with you there. It just, these are two different 9s, let's put it that way.

Ben

[laughs] I get that these are not currently the most compelling actors you've seen. But we're seeing a lot of people early in their careers, when it's cheaper to maybe hire them for these things. And I'm okay with this being some of the first work that people do.

NiNi

So Ben gives it a 9, I give it a 9, that's a 9 for Tokyo In April Is…

26:23 - Be My Favorite

NiNi

Ok Ben, so let's talk Be My Favorite. We, well I, had no intention of watching this, you were going in hostile…Ben, tell the people, what is Be My Favorite about?

Ben

Be My Favorite is about Krist Perawat’s redemption arc. No, Be My Favorite is about this young man named Botkawi, who is thirty years old and still stuck in all of his mess from when he was still a student. He is invited to the wedding of the girl that he has had a crush on for ten years—who he has never really spoken to—has an entire crisis about it, then a magic uncle gives him a plot device to travel back in time to try and change his future. Along the way he ends up realizing that he didn't really understand any of the relationships in his life, and because this is a BL, ends up with the guy who Pear, the girl he was into, was going to marry.

Honestly, describing the show's plot is going to make it sound really silly, but fundamentally it was a show about the importance of kindness, and just choosing to be a little bit decent to people, even when it didn't feel like it benefited you at all. And how that can have transformative effects in the lives of everyone around them.

NiNi

I think that's a good descriptor, and I think you're right that if you just dryly explain what the show is about, it seems like it's a little silly—but it was really really affecting, I found it quite deep and quite emotional in a lot of ways. Kawi is a loser, but he's a loser because he chose to be. He got into his head that he was a loser and he just cut himself off from all the people in his life, and sort of manifested his own loserdom. When we meet Kawi, like we can see that, because people are trying to be his friend, people are trying to be close to him, people are trying to socialize with him and have him as part of their crew, their group, their whatever, and he is just not having it. He's stuck in his own head and his own sadness and his own perception of himself? And the way that his life has gone? And he can't seem to unstick himself.

The catalyst for him starting to unstick himself is when this wedding invitation arrives. That's when you start to get the full story of how Kawi even landed up here. You get to go back in time with him to the point in time when the decisions that he made landed him here. He thinks of it as nothing having worked out for him for twelve years, but what it really is in actuality is that he hasn't tried anything in twelve years. He's just allowed himself to become this sad sack of a person, and just told himself that he was a loser.

The show is very…it delves into the idea of how you can turn your perception, however misguided it is, into your reality. It's a lot about not being able to see the good things that are in your life, only being able to see the bad. There’s a few threads in there that are interesting that the show runs with: threads on alcoholism and binge drinking, threads on decentering yourself from other people's stories. There is a lot the show says about being an active participant in your own life. I thought it was a really interesting show, and well done. Well written, well produced, well directed, and very well acted, I think. I did not go into this as a Krist fan, because I did not think that he was a good actor. And I was very surprised and quite pleased with his chops in this. I love Fluke Gawin, I think he ascended to another level in this particular show. I think he put more of himself into this show than he has into some of his other roles, and I was impressed already with some of his other roles.

Ben, what did you think about it?

Ben

I went into this show…ambivalent? Many of us in the BL-sphere had fallen out of favor with Krist, and I'm also really hit or miss with Jittirain's work, because I don't like how much lying is a big part of her stories. I was really surprised by how much lying was not part of the story of this. This show cared so much about earnestness. It was very determined for people to say what needed to be said to each other, and begged people to treat each other kindly.

One of the things that I really liked early in this show was that three different characters confessed to each other in this love triangle. Pear has a crush on Pisaeng, Pisaeng has a crush on Kawi, Kawi has a crush on Pear. They all reject each other, and it ends up improving their friendships, because now that nobody is withholding their feelings for fear of rejection, they can treat each other properly again. They did the thing that Korean stuff does a lot, which demands that people confess, but they did it in a way that showed that it's actually beneficial, and it can get better for people after you confess, even when you're rejected. I thought that was really really lovely. The show just begs you to choose kindness, to be a little bit nicer to people. To not be so selfish.

And I was not expecting that [laughs] from a Jittirain adaptation with such an unlikable character in Kawi? Because Kawi was not an easy character to like on the front end of the show. It felt very…calculated in the casting, to use an actor that had such a complicated relationship with the BL community? Who starts off so unlikable, and then to make us like him over the course of the show, by letting him grow and change, and letting us grow along with him. Like that was really restorative, in a way that I am genuinely floored by. We didn't want to like him in the beginning, but I genuinely cared about him by the end of the show.

34:00 BMF: The time travel mechanic

NiNi

Let's talk a little bit about the time travel, Ben, because I think that the time travel mechanic is kind of important to the story. So, let's break down a little bit how they do the time travel.

So like you said, there's a McGuffin object that they use, one of those little music boxes thingies? And when you turn the music box the first time, nothing happens. But then the next time that you turn the music box, you are taken back in time to the first point at which you turned the music box. From then on, you're slingshotting back and forth between two points in time, which is the last time you turned the music box in the past, and the last time you turned the music box in the future.

Ben

The big thing with the time travel mechanic is that you're not in a Groundhog Day story. You're not reliving the same day over and over again. This is not about Kawi having to keep retrying the same moments over and over again. The big thing with the time travel mechanic is that you create a checkpoint in the future and a checkpoint in the past, but every time you go back to one area or another, you're still moving forward. So he comes back to when he first buys the snow globe. He goes back the first time to when he bought it and he tries to give it to Pear, but once he tries to go back to the future after the first jump, whenever he goes back, he's back to wherever he was after he attempted to give it to her. So he has to keep moving forward; he gets one redo of what he did before. And so he's still forced to live with the consequences of his choices, he can't just keep trying over and over again. That's also kind of a metaphor? You can maybe mess up something once, and try again with people? Before they're like, ‘okay well this is who you are,’ and then they leave you alone.

I really liked this particular time travel story, because so much about jumping forward for Kawi represented where he was in the moment. So the first time he thinks he's accomplished all the things he came to, to do, like save his dad, become friendly with Pear, etc, and he jumps forward—his life is a mess. Because he was overindulgent when he was last in the past, and that played out to him becoming an alcoholic in the future, who was not great in his relationship with Pear, because he hadn't really committed to being in the relationship with Pear, he just wanted to have the relationship. And this caused friction with all the other people in his life. Particularly Max, his gay bestie, who was one of the first relationships he fixed. Like, he had stopped hanging out with his gay bestie because people were like ‘are you guys, like, homo because you guys are besties?’ So he avoided Max to avoid conflict with other people. But he fixes his relationship with Max, and Max ends up staying by his side through most of the timelines that we get to see in the future.

But a big part of the way this time travel mechanics works, by like—you move forward in both the future and the past—it forces Kawi to be present in either place while he's there. And he eventually learns the theme of the show, which is, live a life that you won't feel like you need to change. We get a great use of this towards the end when Pisaeng, in a moment of fear about Kawi potentially dying, jumps back to the past to try and somehow fix it. Kawi clocks him as a time traveler right away, but they end up revisiting like their first proper date? And end up facing each other as two time travelers trying to fix their past. Kawi really rises to that moment, and tells Pisaeng, ‘don't worry about it.’ I found that in particular to be really satisfying. That for somebody like Kawi who could only see the world negatively, by the end of the show he's able to give his partner—who is incredibly optimistic as an individual, who's facing a really terrifying loss in potentially losing him—the courage to face that eventuality, and say that our lives are still worth living and enjoying even if they might be a little bit short. Which is…kind of a heavy theme for the kind of upbeat Friday BLs that GMMTV likes to do.

So. I was really impressed with the way they handled the time travel mechanic in this. I think it offered a lot to the storytelling, I don't think this show works as just a relationship show otherwise, I think the fact that it's a time travel show is the only reason this particular story functions. And that makes me very fond of it as a result.

NiNi

Yeah, I like all of the time travel mechanic work specifically because one of the things that it makes you think about is that every time Kawi jumps forward to the future, there is a sense that, almost in a way that time stopped—obviously not, because time has kept going—but more that he stopped developing or he got stuck at the point in time where he jumped forward. So when he jumps forward to the future, he's still the Kawi that jumped forward from the past, he has not grown, has not evolved, has not anything like that. And it feels like all the people around him are stuck too? So it's almost like at the point in time that he jumps forward he freezes everybody in amber, which I really appreciated as a metaphor for, you can't fast forward through your life. You have to live it. Which is one of the themes of the show that I think was executed really well, utilizing that aspect of the time travel mechanic. Every time he tries to short circuit and just go from the past to the future without living through the bits in between, the future doesn't go well, it doesn't end well for him. I really did like that about the way that they use the time travel mechanic.

I like how this team deals with science fiction mechanics, because this is the same team that did The Gifted and The Gifted: Graduation, which are probably two of the best Thai dramas that I’ve ever watched, and the way that they think about the genre implications and the genre aspects of the shows that they do—they put effort into it, they're not lazy about the genre work that they're doing. And they deeply integrate it into the story that they're telling otherwise, so to to your point about how this story wouldn't have worked if it wasn't a time travel story: completely agree about that. The time travel is absolutely necessary to the emotional core of the story, and to the core of who the characters are and how they move through their lives. It's really…critical aspect of it. If Kawi hadn't already lived through to the version of his future where he's a sad sack, he might not have been motivated to fix his past. And then if he hadn't jumped forward to a point in time that he thought he fixed everything, and realized that he just made it worse, he wouldn't have, again, tried to go back and fix it properly. And then in going back, decided to live his life rather than trying to fast forward to the end.

One of the things that it really forces him to do as well—because there are rules to the time travel mechanic—basically there are some things that you can't change? There's some things that you can't avoid, there are some things that you can't fix. And this is shown in the person of Kawi's dad. One of the things that Kawi tries to do when he goes back to the past, is he tries to prevent his dad from dying? And he thinks that he's succeeded, because he knows when his dad is gonna die. He knows why he's gonna die. He succeeds at getting him medical help, but he dies anyway, because death is one of those things that you can't avoid, you can't change, it is what it is. Between the discussions of alcoholism and that fact of there being things in the timeline that you just can't change, it led me to the serenity prayer as a reading of the show. You have to know what you can change. You have to have the courage to change that stuff that you can change. You have to have the serenity to accept the things that you can't change.

So for Kawi, he knew he could change things about himself, things about the decisions that he made in the past. Those were the things that he had to change, and he had to discover the courage to change those things, which he did. But he had to also accept the things that he couldn't change. He couldn't change his dad dying. He couldn't change the fact that Pear did not feel the way about him that he felt about her. He couldn't change the fact that Pisaeng felt the way that he felt about him, or that he felt the way that he felt about Pisaeng. He had to accept those things. And then he had to determine, he had to learn, the difference between those two things—because that's the basis of the serenity prayer, right? You have to accept what you can't change, you have to change the things you can, and you have to have the wisdom to know the difference between those things, which is also what the whole time travel thing is giving him.

Ben

It's the kind of show that makes the audience feel smart because they were paying attention to what was happening. It doesn't require the audience to notice a bunch of things in the set design or the costuming, or easter eggs that are planted all over the place. It just rewards the audience for leaning in a little bit and participating in the themes. Recognizing the kind of story that they're telling, and they're very up front about it, they're very clear that kindness, even small amounts, is transformative. And that just choosing to be nice to someone and not be a dick to them, in a critical moment—even if it's a small moment for you—can affect the way that they view themselves and their life.

44:47 BMF: Dings

NiNi

Because we always have to talk about our dings: what are the elements in the story that you were hoping that they were going to deal with that they didn't deal with?

Ben

So I wrote a post about Pisaeng's mom, and how she is engaged in some of the worst kind of evils that queer people have faced. Pisaeng’s mom is a wealthy woman pursuing a political career, and you get the sense that his being out is inconvenient for her. Later they tried to recontextualize this as, ‘she was just concerned that his life would be harder if he chose to be out.’ But one of the things that's revealed in around episode 4, I believe? Is that her employees are spying on Pisaeng, and reporting on him when he goes into queer spaces. She jacks him up about that, and then tries to manipulate him into going back into the closet now that he's trying to push the door open. He knows who he is; this is not a discovery story for Pisaeng. And it was frustrating for me that with all of the evils about her trying to manipulate her own son back into the closet—they also have Max, who's presented as wise in the story and woke as shit, admire her for the things she said when Pisaeng feels some kind of way about her because of the way he treats her. And that is never dealt with in the show. Irked the shit out of me. It raised my hackles when it came to the mom so much, that her resolution with Pear’s dad, to just let the kids sort their lives out, was not enough for me.

On the other end of things that were frustrating for me…I don't like the resolution for Knot. I'm really glad that he got his ass handed to him by Pear and Kwan, because he was a dick. But in a show so much about kindness and change, it feels kind of weird that we leave Knot when he has basically hit rock bottom, and then don’t talk about him or acknowledge him. He just appears at graduation, and he appears at the wedding, and seemingly is a novelist—no matter what history we're in, Knot will be a successful novelist. Max wasn't allowed to have an on-screen boyfriend, but Aou was serving.

NiNi

You talked a little bit about episode 10, and Pisaeng and Kawi's first time, and how it felt like somewhere in there, between them getting together and that moment happening it felt like there was a conversation missing. Now I definitely agreed with you with that, I think a lot of people agreed with you with that. But I do also want to talk about Kawi’s journey with intimacy. There were a lot of people who were reading Kawi as ace-coded throughout the show. I don't think that I ever bought an ace or aspec read on Kawi—well, I wouldn't say not aspec, because I feel like maybe a demi read would be a read that I could get down with.

But I never bought an ace read on Kawi, and there was a lot about the ways that Kawi was discovering his sexuality, not just in the sense of…sexual identity, of being gay or of being a man who likes men, but also in terms of the fact that, when we meet Kawi in the original timeline, Kawi is a 30-year-old virgin. It's sort of put together as part of his whole loser aura that he never got it together enough to be with anybody? So in going back in time, he's going back into his 18-year-old self as a 30-year-old virgin. So this is somebody who has not experienced any sort of intimacy: emotional, physical, any sort of intimacy in his life. The lift that he's lifting, in terms of discovering who he is as a sexual person—not just as a queer person, but just as a person discovering his sexuality period—that was the read that I bought?

Ben

I guess I'll disclose a little bit before I pooh-pooh on the ace Kawi read. I identify as demisexual, and I don't like the ace read of Kawi. Kawi is almost very much in the BL space of, he's happy if they just cuddle and hold hands only. Which is the space some of the readers of BL and yaoi like to put these boys in. The reality coming from Max to Kawi is that Pisaeng is a gay man, who knows he's gay, who's into you. You must face the reality of male-male intimacy if you're going to be in a long term male-male romance. Which—all I think the point they were trying to make with Kawi and Max. By seeing Kawi choose to face that, in the episode with the amusement park about how Kawi needs to face some of his own uncertainties, and go on the ride that might be a little bit scary for him, ha ha, they're getting that particular point across.

It's a little bit muddled, but I'm not a fan of the ace Kawi read, because it feels that we project asexuality onto prudish characters or chaste shows. And that's not always what's happening. I don't want to claim Kawi for the ace side of the board? Because while I do think that a demiromantic, demisexual read is totally valid for him? You must respect that that is a read on the character from the place where you're sitting: don't think that is part of the canon of this show. I think the show is making a different point about male-male intimacy, not trying to make a point about ace spectrum existence.

NiNi

I agree with you that the show muddled that point. But it tried to pull it back by having the do-over of the amusement park beats.

Ben

And that's the really muddled part, because by going back to the amusement park date and doing it better the second time, but not taking us to that moment because they didn't want future Pisaeng to take that moment from their past selves, I think it still leaves the audience hanging. It's okay for them to say that that moment is between them, but it feels like we didn't follow Kawi's arc through that big step. We've been with Kawi for so many personal and really ugly moments, that it was kind of surprising that they would slam the door on us right there.

NiNi

They did show us the first time, and they showed us the aftermath of the first time, and whatever they did, Kawi seemed pretty happy with it. It's not that the arc wasn't complete, it was that a piece of the arc felt like it was missing.

Ben

I'm not necessarily mad about it, but it's why I did not give this show a 10. It's one of the reasons I did not give the show a 10.

52:57 BMF: Jittirain and Gawin and Krist

NiNi

You talked a little bit in the beginning about Jittirain stories, because we were both not feeling Jittirain. I am a known non-fan of Theory of Love. I skipped, and Ben did not enjoy, Vice Versa. Ben likes 2gether for reasons, I have never been particularly interested in it. Jittirain is not particularly my cup of tea, I don't really think that you are a great fan of them either? So why does this story work for us?

Ben

Because the show is not about lying. The show is about telling the truth. And almost all of her stories are built on a core lie underpinning the show. I was waiting for some huge lie to upend this show around the midpoint and it really doesn't. This show was about being earnest and forthright with people. And it was fascinating to see an adaptation of Jittirain work—because I understand that very many liberties were taken with the source material—to tell a story that was not about withholding for some sort of power play over the other person. It was very much a show about how our lives are better when we're earnest with each other. I don't know how much Jittirain's original writing had to do with that or not, because I have not read her books? But this particular story really worked for me!

NiNi

I was so surprised that the Krist and Gawin pairing ended up working. The chemistry was there, the emotional resonance was there between the two characters which I really liked. A lot of time when we talk about chemistry in these shows, we end up talking a lot about the physical chemistry or the sexual chemistry, but something that gets sort of thrown to the side a lot is the emotional chemistry between the characters, and the way that the actors play that emotional chemistry. I really enjoyed the emotional chemistry between Kawi and Pisaeng, and I really enjoy how Krist and Gawin played that emotional chemistry and emotional tension.

Ben

I believe that one of the directors talked about this, that Gawin and Krist are kind of playing against type. They had to really push Gawin out of his shyness to play the Pisaeng character, and they talked about how they struggled in some of their early cues trying to get Gawin and Krist to fall into alignment.

I wasn't worried about Gawin, because Gawin is always playing the emotionally repressed gay man who is sad, because he can't be gay the way he wants to be, in the world he finds himself to be in. That's what he's good at! He's done it three times now! He did it with Mork in Dark Blue Kiss, he did it with Dan in Not Me, and he did it again here with Pisaeng. As soon as they’re like, ‘he's been gay the whole time’ I'm like, ‘there it is! I knew there was a reason we cast Gawin!’

[both laugh]

Ben

But Krist was a real surprise for me, and there were a bunch of interesting callbacks to SOTUS that a couple of us caught along the way, with the way some of the shots are set up, some of the way some of the moments were reconstructed…definite callbacks to SOTUS asking us to compare who Krist was in, say 2016, to who he is now in 2023. And I liked the show giving us all the chance to move on from how we felt about who Krist was at the beginning of BL.

NiNi

It's deliberately done. The creators of the show, they chose Krist deliberately for this role, and part of it was about his public persona; this was a rehabilitation role for him. They've talked about that, and he talked about how hard he worked, because he wanted to change the way that people in the BL fandom thought about him. And I thought that was really neat. I didn't get too much or give too much to whatever the controversies were? My issue with Krist was always that I didn't feel like he was giving 100% in the role that he was playing? And I can't say that I knew why, but there was an eau de homophobia around it, I do have to say. I didn't get into the behind the scenes stuff, and the, whatever he said on the IG live, and, like, that wasn't my thing about it. My thing was that, if you're going to act in a role, play the role, no matter what the role is. So that was always my issue with Krist, I felt like he didn't put his all into the role. I can't say that about him here. Whatever happened back in the SOTUS days, Krist was really young, he was new to acting in general, he was new to this particular industry. Did he make mistakes? He might have, he must have, he probably did. But he put, like, whole pussy into this role, I cannot say that he left anything on the table, and that is definitely the opposite of the way I felt about him when I watched the five episodes of SOTUS that I managed to get through before I quit.

Ben

I'm okay with it! Krist, you may have a plate, sir. You can sit with us now.

[both laugh]

NiNi

I feel like you have done the work, sir. You have earned this plate that you're getting. Good job. So, ratings for Be My Favorite? You said that you rated it a 9, and you had some specific dings on it.

Ben

The mom stuff bothered me, the Knot stuff felt like a thematic misstep, and I don't really think that Aou's character has an arc in the show, he's just there as the wise gay—who has great pants, and nice legs. And like these things are fine. I think the show is fine, but I don't think I'll be rewatching it, and I don't think it's my first recommend. It's a 9, you can have it.

NiNi

I gave this show a 10.

Ben

This show does not get to sit next to La Pluie, Moonlight Chicken, and My School President this year!

NiNi

My 10s are unrelated to all of my other 10s.

Ben

Mine are inherently related to each other.

NiNi

All my 10s are very different 10s! And I gave Be My Favorite a 10 because it nailed, for me, its core premise, like absolutely nailed it. There are, to me, no holes in the core. There are some wobbly edges…there are some little tweaks and stuff that could have been done around the sides, but to me the core of the show is absolutely solid. I got myself a nice few emotional moments, there was nothing about it that bothered me so significantly that I had to ding it. For me, it was a 10.

So 10 from me, 9 from Ben, so that leads us to a 9.5, which I think is a good place for this show to sit personally. Ben, I think, feels a little like ‘ugh, 9.5 is giving it a lot!’

Ben

It's a 9.

NiNi

Yes, but we have a rule.

Ben

I am weighting the average down a quarter of a point.

NiNi

That is…not how maths works, but okay, I will let you have it. 9.25 instead of 9.5, even though that is not how mathematics work, it is fine. [laughs]

1:00:58 - Outro

NiNi

So, Ben…now that we've got some distance between us and these shows: what are some of the things that are sticking with you? What's lingering?

Ben

Tokyo In April Is... was really really gay, and that was preserved from the manga adaptation. Like I was listening back to it and my love for Ryunosuke holds firm. I really liked that this show and Be My Favorite has a very self-affirmed queer character holding the line on the bullshit. In Ryunosuke’s case, he doesn't like Kazuma, because Kazuma should know better, and he doesn't like what that did to Ren. I like that he's in a position to call that out and it's like, ‘we are gay; that means something in this world.’

I really like that both of these shows are pushing past the boundaries of the BL bubble, and reminding the genre and the people who enjoy it that queer people matter, that their lived experiences matter, that there are consequences to the things that queer people experience, that don't go away just because they got some dick. So I ended up, even further away from these shows, like, I find myself thinking about Ryunosuke a lot, and I find myself thinking about Max a lot. I like that Max told Kawi that he does need to reckon with the physical realities of being in a relationship with someone. Felt like very specific shade about BL itself not really considering the physical realities of two men being together.

NiNi

For me, the further away I get from Tokyo In April Is... the less it sticks with me. But I'm having the opposite reaction to Be My Favorite. The further away I get from it, somehow things are popping up in my mind and I'm finding myself thinking about it.

Ben

I'm on the opposite side of that. I thought Be My Favorite was solid, but I watched like 22 things this season: Be My Favorite is not on my ‘I'm thinking about that motherfucker’ list at all. And it's not like [laughs] it's bad in any way. It's just not the show I'm thinking about.

Like I really like the way they handle grief, I really like the way they handle people having unrequited feelings for other people, I really like that show's messaging about how unrequited love is still good, and it should be expressed, because it can help that relationship become a more healthy balanced version of itself. I like how that show says that telling people you love them is one of the best things you can do. Like that's a pretty cool message! But this is not the show this year that makes my, even top 10, in terms of things I'm going to be thinking about long term.

NiNi

I think while you were talking about it I figured out what it is. It's the thing about having to live your life; that you can't short-circuit it, that you can't fast-forward it. That you can't even really go back and do it over, in the way that you might want to. ‘The only way out is through’ is one of my mantras, and I feel like that was also one of the mantras of the show. You can't avoid things, you can't circumvent them, you can't jump over them: you have to go through them.

Ben

I think, as always, Be My Favorite was not gay enough for me.

NiNi

We're going to be talking a lot about that, I think, over the course of the next few episodes and the next few seasons, because I think we've hit a point in BL where it kinda has to shit or get off the pot on being queer rep, and what they are deciding to rep for queerness?

Ben

I don't know how exactly to describe it. For me…Max is pretty gay in a way that I found really accessible. Pisaeng is gay in a way that I found mostly accessible? Kawi's queerness was…a bit difficult for me to grasp. I'm not necessarily keen on the ace Kawi read, because it feels like a cop out. I don't like calling characters ace because they are sexually inexperienced and/or repressed. Either make a story about the complexities of asexuality or shut the fuck up. I don't like the way the cutesy shit reads for me these days.

With Tokyo In April Is... I like how specifically queer their story feels. That you had two boys who loved each other in high school; did not believe the other boy could reciprocate; they have one night together before everything goes horribly wrong; and then one of them tries to take on all of the suffering for the other one, and mostly succeeds? And then they run into each other again, because of course they do. Particularly because the boy who was saved™ never got over the other boy, and has been trying to get back to him for ten years. And that just really works for me. I get the way that both of them are wounded. It doesn't have to be explained to me. Even if the actors may not have consistently landed the performances? Tokyo In April Is... hits for me because it's the kind of experience that I am unfortunately familiar with! And that's the kind of stuff that's going to stick with me more.

NiNi

In winding up here: we talked about second chance romance in the spring, and I feel like we had a lot to say about why we like it? And I just want to get a sense of…how you’re feeling about second chance romance coming out of these two particular shows.

For me, I was really happy with what these two shows said about second chance romance. In both of them there was in some ways a forgiveness of self that needed to happen, in order for these two couples to get their shit together. And it was a forgiveness of self that needed to happen on both sides of the couple? So it wasn't necessarily that one had done something wrong to the other, it was more that…these are people who were living half-lives. In some ways beating themselves up about something that had happened in their past? And I liked that these two shows really put an emphasis on self healing as prerequisite to love. These people had to find themselves to find their love. I like that message.

Ben

Like I said last season, second chance romance is important for me as a gay person. Our youths aren't easy; I'm feeling a whole lot better about myself in my 30s than I did in my teens or my 20s. I do think that second chances are important for queer people, because a lot of people didn't figure it out until they were away from their families and in school and stuff, and a lot of us who did figure it out early did not talk to anybody about it, or did not have a great time with it, or were interested in people who hadn't figured it out yet. And so second chance romance in BL remains super important for me. It's probably the current style of story that most appeals to me.

NiNi

That is going to wrap us up on our On Time and Memory episode. We out! Say bye to the people, Ben.

Ben

Peace!

#podcast #lgbtq #tokyo in april is...#be my favorite #the conversation #ben and nini's conversations #on art #fall series #fall 2023 #thai bl #bl series #season 4 #s4e3 #shigatsu no tokyo wa...#Spotify

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