#raise de wa chanto shimasu

[aroaceineveryplace]

Explicitly Aspec Characters in Japanese Dramas

Japanese shows have been coming through recently with that aro and ace rep! Thought I would put together a list for anyone interested in seeing more aro, ace and aroace characters. Feel free to add on if I've missed any!

Koisenu Futari (TV series) - Takahashi Satoru and Kodama Sakuko

You've probably heard of this show. It has not one but two explicitly aroace characters with very different personalities. The entire show revolves around them figuring out life after identifying as aroace. Takahashi is also canonically touch-averse.

Kimi no Hana ni Naru (TV series) - Onodera Takara

I have not watched the show personally and so am not sure whether he's aro or aroace. Every time I see the translations, they are different, so will update as and when I watch the show for myself. But he does explicitly say he does not experience romantic attraction. This show is also written by the screenwriter of Koisenu Futari.

Cherry Magic (TV series and Movie) - Fujisaki Nozomi

Another gem from the creator of Koisenu Futari. Fujisaki is canonically aroace.

Konya Sukiyaki Dayo (TV Series) - Asano Tomoko

Again, I'm not sure whether Tomoko is aro or aroace but she explicitly says she is aromantic in the show and that she doesn't understand romantic attraction.

Raise de wa Chanto Shimasu (TV Series) - Takasugi Ume

The main character's best friend is explicitly aroace. She says she "isn't capable" of experiencing romantic attraction, admits to never having had sex, and is uncomfortable with people being attracted to her.

[idleminds]

[mihotose]

Momoe and Nagi's girls' night in

Raise de wa Chanto Shimasu | 3.04

[niaoniaos]

@pscentral​ event 12: take two, event 04: love @userphotoshop​ event 10 | colours @userdramas event 04: love ↳ fake, fake, real

raise de wa chanto shimasu (2020), raise de wa chanto shimasu 2 (2021), raise de wa chanto shimasu 3 (2023)

[aspeccharactersoftheday]

Takasugi Ume from Raise de wa Chanto Shimasu is aromantic asexual!

[namtanlovesfilm]

currently binging this show to calm my emotional turmoil & tell me why it's the biggest jbl crossover ever?? the main character is played by haruta's best friend from ossan's love, there's also minato from cherry magic, the wife from life: love on the line, and in season 2 the main girlie goes on a date with kido from mood indigo??? I literally cried at kido's appearance lmaooo I'm very weak today & I love mood indigo an abnormal amount :')))

[miss-floral-thief]

mood

[nobodys-saviour]

[evelientimes]

[crayonflop]

follow ur dreams

[leekimdramas]

Raise de wa Chanto Shimasu 3 Review

At first two seasons was fine... But why I think we will get the 4th one too?

The plot follows the same 5 people, their relationships and their sex lives.

A short review without spoilers would be that I enjoyed this season but I just wish they didn't overreact so much.

I don't know if I just don't remember it right but it didn't seem like a big issue in the past seasons, I saw a few people talking about it too, so maybe it's not just me issue.

And I just wish it would seem like we're moving towards the end... Or at least somewhere.

Raise de wa Chanto Shimasu reviews: season 1, season 2.

Momoe is the main focus of the drama but I don't think there is much to say about her in this season.

She had her moments and I liked her storyline but I think she was the character who didn't get a lot of growth this season and some of her reactions to things annoyed me. (That's where I felt most overreactions came from and it doesn't help that other characters look weirdly at her)

I was a big Matsuda/Momoe shipper from the first season, so I'm happy just to see them together but even if they're together now, why do I still feel like they're not getting enough screen time?

Matsuda is the one to go through some stuff and I was interested in his ex-lover story or his sister's and I would love to see in the next season what happened to his sister and maybe more communication about that with Momoe.

I don't think that Matsuda's actor did well in the emotional scene, he's not a bad actor but I just don't feel it was very believable.

Takasugi Ume is still one of my favourites and I really like seeing her knowing what she wants now in the relationships but not completely dismissing other people's feelings.

Hayashi didn't have a lot of screen time this season and I'm not really mad about it. I think we came a long way from the virgin girl thing but I just need him to grow some balls and maybe do something about the Kuriyama situation.

What I absolutely despised this season was Hiyama. He was a complete stalker mode and I just wished he would never be on the screen again. Sorry not sorry and I hope Kokoro runs far away so he can never find her.

Overall, I think for me 1-4 episode was a bit hard to get through as sometimes it felt a bit weird and not like the past seasons but I got back into enjoying it.

But after 3 seasons, I'm not sure if we have enough development in characters. Sometimes with the new season, it even feels like we're back at the start and by the end of it we're again left with so many unanswered questions.

8/10

[idleminds]

[mihotose]

Raise de wa Chanto Shimasu | 3.04

[waitmyturtles]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

. . . . . .

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

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

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

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

And then.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[zea9love]

Long vent rant ahead with some mentions of how I can relate to Lexi. Feel free to skip lmao

I truly hate feeling jealous of my older sister! That girl is one of my favorite people in the world and I love her with all my heart and yet here I am being jealous of so many things about her!

She’s pretty, she’s cool, has a lot of friends, there are always guys wanting to get with her, a guy flirted with her at a party we went to LAST NIGHT, and I couldn’t help thinking about how I want that for myself! I relate so much to Lexi feeling like she’s in the background while her sister gets all the love and attention from everyone (not talking about our parents though, they’re good lmao)

I know I’m not the prettiest girl around and some people might find me boring, but at least I’m nice, kind, and funny. So why am I always stuck with irl friends that treat me like shit? Why doesn’t anybody ever try to flirt with me? Why do I always end up alone?

We’ve talked about how I’m jealous of her several times before and she’s pointed out things about me that she jealous of, said that my time for relationships and stuff like that will come, that people would be lucky to have me in their lives, etc. but I’M TIRED OF FEELING LIKE THIS!

I was watching a show called Raise de wa Chanto Shimasu not too long ago and this scene from S2E5 made me break down cuz that was exactly how I felt

Anyways, I’m gonna go listen to “Jealousy, Jealousy” by Morning Musume and cry

[thewalkingplumbob]

Get To Know The Blogger 💖

Thanks for the tag, @akitasimblr 🥰

✿ show your wallpaper. My phone wallpaper is this picture of Ishihara Satomi, my favorite Japanese actress.

✿ last song you listened to. Konayuki by Remioromen

✿ currently reading. Obsession by Karen Robards

✿ last movie. I'm still in the middle of watching the Japanese movie Kingdom 2.

✿ last show. Raise de wa Chanto Shimasu season 3

✿ craving. Soda. I've had to completely cut it out of my diet. 😭

✿ what are you wearing rn ;) Comfy pajamas that involve no pants 😉

✿ how tall are you. A little under 5'6"

✿ tattoos. None

✿ glasses/contacts. Glasses

✿ last thing you ate. Mashed potatoes

✿ favorite color. Pink

✿ current obsession. Adult coloring books and gel pens

✿ any pets. A kitty cat named Sebastian aka Sebby. 💕

✿ favorite fictional character. Makino Tsukushi from Hana Yori Dango. She was tough but kind and stayed true to herself no matter what.

✿ last place you traveled. My grandparent's house lol

This was fun! I tag @sweetpyxels, @silverspringsimmer, @lazymblr, @ellemant, and anyone else who wants to do this. Feel free to say I tagged you!