#threerings recs TV Shows

[three--rings]

You Should Watch Moonlight Chicken

Welcome to my formal rec of this show, which has stolen my heart so completely over the last few weeks.

What is it?

Thai BL series from GMMTV which has just finished airing (as of March 2, 2023). The characters all revolve around a chicken rice diner called Moonlight Chicken. It's got eight episodes a little over an hour each.

Couples:

Jim and Wen:

The main characters and couple are Jim (left above) and Wen (right). They meet when Wen passes out drunk at Jim's restaurant one night and they end up talking and flirting and then going home for a "no strings attached" one night stand.

Afterwards Wen is determined to attach strings but Jim holds firm to his "no complications" rule. Wen starts working part time at the diner in a not-at-all-sneaky plot to win him over.

Heart and Li Ming:

The adorable teen couple of Jim's nephew Li Ming, who he is raising, and Heart, a boy who has been extremely isolated since becoming deaf three years ago. They quickly develop a friendship and learn to communicate and it's heartwarming and adorable right up until it deal with very real issues of ableism.

Other characters:

Alan

He's Wen's not-quite-or-maybe ex. It's complicated. The show might be just as much about Wen and Alan as Wen and Jim, but theirs is a breakup story.

Gaipa:

He's a young friend of Jim, with a massive crush on him. Unrequited love and his relationship with his amazing mom is his focus. Standout performance from the actor.

Saleng:

The token straight. I felt bad leaving him out, okay? He's a good boy.

Okay but what's it ABOUT?

Life. Love. Relationships. Growing up, healing, building community and family even in the face of adversity.

Could you elaborate?

Okay look, the way the plot of this show was sold was "One Night Stand leads to complications when one of them already has a boyfriend?!? Drama!" Which is downright misleading. I showed up for messy gay drama and got a profound piece of queer cinematic art about the struggles of modern life and love and relationships.

This is honestly not your typical BL series at all. It really does feel a lot more like serious drama, queer film, etc than what we are used to. (I'm not saying it's ALONE...just rare.) It feels like a director/creator coming into their own and really stretching their abilities.

The cinematography is gorgeous, creating a quiet and pensive mood throughout. The acting is remarkable, excellent across the board with some real stand-out performances from the "side" characters.

The plot flirts with melodrama/soap opera turns but it always comes down on the side of grounded, realistic takes. I'll just say there are some moments that really hit me because they reflect experiences I've had in my life so well.

This show is very Adult to me. And by that, I don't mean steamy or sexy. It's really not, despite the first episode. It's a very chaste show, all things considered. I mean Adult in terms of These are Problems Adults Have. Dealing with the ending of relationships, getting over past relationship trauma, dealing with grief and loss, figuring out what you want in life, having to be there for your ex because they need you and you still care, etc. Just life, sometimes messy and painful, but ultimately beautiful.

If you can't tell I could go on for a while. But honestly, even if you're not a BL watcher normally, I recommend you give this a try. It's a feel-good show that will make you cry.

Okay where do I watch it?

Good news! The show is available for free on YouTube in its entirety! Just look for the GMMTV official channel.

Content Warnings under the cut to avoid potential spoilers but they will remain vague

Having sex while under the influence of alcohol but fairly lucid, cheating as a topic, breakups, ableism and parental neglect as a result, death of a partner, death of a parent, motor vehicle accident aftermath, age gap relationship(s)

[three--rings]

Manner of Death (2020) Review/Rec

So I’ve just finished watching this Thai BL, and it’s absolutely excellent.  So in the custom of....me.  I’m gonna tell you about it.

I’ve talked before about the things that I generally don’t enjoy in BL dramas, and how I am not really a huge fan of most shows.  So that’s context.

Manner of Death is the best attempt I’ve seen of any BL show at being a “real” drama, with quality plot and writing, that just happens to also involve a m/m romance as well. 

But rather than just say it’s good, pretty much the whole reason I’m writing this post is that the trigger warning list for this show is EXTENSIVE and I feel I have to talk about that.

Manner of Death is a mystery-thriller about a series of mysterious deaths in a small Thai town. 

Trigger warnings for: Murder, autopsies, sexual abuse, drug abuse, forced drug abuse, abortion, illegal abortions, abortions gone wrong, rape, coerced sex, coerced drug abuse, suicide, sex trafficking, human trafficking, police corruption, and probably more. 

All of those are involved in the main case, not the romance.  But parts of the show are ROUGH in the way things play out and how some characters are treated and what is onscreen.  So while much of the show is fine and pleasant, exercise care.

Main Characters:

Bun (above right) - Dr. Bunnakit, a medical examiner who has recently returned to his hometown in a rural area after becoming jaded by like in Bankok.

Tan (above left) - a tutor and mysterious person who Bun suspects of murder. Also someone he saw once in a bar and immediately kissed while incredibly drunk.

Also all of those people.  ;)

Plot:

I don’t want to spoil things because it’s worth going through the story blind.  But, generally: People start turning up dead, and as the medical examiner Bun isn’t satisfied with the police conclusions, so he pursues the truth on his own.

This gets him in danger, and the mysterious Tan appoints himself his protector.  Because reasons they end up living together and acting Extremely Married while investigating the mystery that keeps getting more complicated.

Verdict:

A+ honestly. 

It’s still clearly made on a limited budget but the production has clearly tried to do the best they can on their resources.  The severe color grading gives it a moody but dated air and covers some of the budget issues. 

But this really feels like it fits in with some of the other shows I’ve recced, like Beyond Evil and The Devil Judge.  It’s not quite at that level, but it’s trying REAL hard and I admire it.  PLUS it’s got explicit queer romance that is REALLY satisfying.  Like the ending is...SO HAPPY.  I fucking MELTED.  Out-Loud Squeeing from me. 

The gender politics aren’t flawless, in that we get a good amount of female victims and the focus is mostly on the men.  The victims do get their own stories but they aren’t really...empowering.  I don’t know.  It’s not a deal breaker or worse than typical US crime shows, but it’s not perfect and I feel I need to acknowledge it. 

Anyway, given all of that, please go watch it if you’re interested.  It’s not the easiest show to find online, unless you are a WeTv subscriber.  So you may have to do some searching, but it’s worth it.

I mean look at Bun and Tan’s first meeting:

[three--rings]

Final Kinnporsche Review

So in trying to figure out how to approach writing an actual Kinnporsche review, I ended up having to make a list of positives and negatives because I couldn’t figure out how else to approach it.  I’m also keeping this as non-spoilery as possible.

It’s not a show I can praise wholeheartedly without also tempering it with some criticism.  It’s not a show I recommend without caveats.  It is, however, a show I really have enjoyed watching and which I love in many respects.  I’m going to pretty immediately watch it again, and I watched most episodes twice while it was airing.  Plus I’m planning to read the novel on which it was based.

So obviously, I like it. 

But let’s run through my pros and cons.  Gonna start with the cons and then linger on the pros.  These are all, of course, my opinion and I know some people don’t have the same experience of this show as me which is totally valid.  It really depends where your threshold/attitude is towards certain things in your media and everyone is different.

Negatives:

I spoke about this in my initial post about the show, but early on and occasionally throughout, the show has some cringey and embarrassment-based humor.  Especially in episode 2, which is basically ENTIRELY that.  There are a number of scenes in this show I have watched mostly through my hands because I can’t handle second hand embarrassment. 

The setting/premise of the show is not very believable.  The mafia family with a skyscraper full of young, hot bodyguards and James Bond style tech requires a good amount of suspension of disbelief to buy into.  In general the plot and action scenes require you watch with a lot of suspension of disbelief.  This isn’t realistic drama TV, it’s fanfic level mafia AU that runs entirely on Rule of Cool.

The way the plot is handled/shot/edited/written is uneven and has some very sloppy moments.  Some episodes are perfect and tight and others are a hot mess IMO.  There’s a lot of them cutting and you going “wait, what? what happened, where are we, did I miss something?”  Most of the time, the scene you find yourself in is fun and sometimes delightful and therefore you don’t actually care how you got to it.  But it still...rankles, and shows the inexperience of much of the team behind the show.

I can’t speak very well to how this compares to other BL dramas or Thai dramas, but there’s a good amount of cheesy fan service that shows off the bodies of the actors.  I’m not talking about specifically sex scenes or romance scenes, but everyone having their shirts unbuttoned practically to their waists, removing clothes for little reason, etc.  You get used to it as like...background levels of fan services and certainly the eye candy is very nice but...it could turn some people off (and others on I’m sure).

This is almost a World Without Women, as tends to be a problem with BL content.  This really feels like a world where women somehow don’t exist and most men are just queer by default.  There are a couple of mother figures, literal and figurative, but they are rarely on screen.  It would feel a little less weird if, like, IDK any of the men of the family had a female significant other who wasn’t dead.

There are elements of dubious consent in both the kinnporsche and vegaspete (and actually almost kimchay) ships.  There’s one scene of basically sexual assault that IMO is well-handled in the aftermath, but it IS between two people who go on to be in a relationship/fall in love.  There’s also a lot of violence, on-screen torture, and one ship where one of them tortures the other and keeps him as a prisoner before falling for him.   So...there are elements you could say are problematic and/or toxic.  If you are sensitive to these things/themes you should stay away.  BUT I do think the way all of them is handled is SUPER INTERESTING and appealing to me personally.  I love some redemption narratives and complicated characters and relationships.

Which brings me to the Positives.

One of my general complaints about a lot of BL dramas is that they involve young characters in high school or university.  Kinnporsche is lovely in that regard because the characters/actors are mid-late 20s and the plot is way more interesting that just school drama.

The acting level of this show is EXCELLENT pretty much across the board.  Every once in a while a side character has bad line delivery or a particular scene twigs my bad acting nerve, but overall I’m INCREDIBLY IMPRESSED with the cast.  Especially since this is the first job for some of them.  (I have a Real Problem with bad acting that ties into my embarrassment squick so this is a concern with small productions.)

But really Mile, Apo, Bible, Build...they all fucking killed it and conveyed such a range of content.  But especially the super emotional scenes were so fucking good.  (I’m especially impressed with Apo and Bible...damn.)

The filming is very aesthetic, pleasant, and fun to watch.  Despite the obvious low budget which occasionally shows in things like the rare CGI, the cinematography is impressive.  The show loves to show it off, too, with the colored lighting and camera angles, but it never feels too much and makes it a LOT more visually interesting than pretty much any other BL I’ve seen images of.  (And a lot of regular TV, especially romance-focused shows.)

I started talking above about the complicated characters, and this is where the show SHINES.  The characters feel complex and realistic, and have believable development across the series, which of course the acting level shows off.  But also the relationships have ARCS, really huge amounts of development. 

Kinnporsche especially, since that’s the focus of the show.  It’s really a sorta enemies to lovers situation and there’s a lot of stops along the way, although they really sort themselves out by a little over halfway through the show. 

Vegaspete is the secondary ship and it doesn’t get started until close to the end of the season but they do SO MUCH with a few episodes.  I wish it had had a little more time, but I get why it happened that way.  This is even MORE of enemies to lovers with one of them being a main antagonist to boot.  I was expecting to HATE this ship and they...ended up being possibly my faves.

The third ship is Kim/Chay and it’s a really side story kind of thing.  It doesn’t really get the development of the others but it has cute moments and is more of hints for the future/possibly S2.

But all the pairs have SUPER good chemistry.  Like, wow, okay.  That intimacy coaching worked I guess.

Speaking of which, let’s talk Sex Scenes.  This is going to sound a certain way, but my very favorite thing about this show is the sex scenes.  Because I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen better sex on screen.  Most sex scenes on film are cringey and awkward or uncomfortable looking.  But Kinnporsche manages to make them hot, sexy, beautiful, and also to have a lot of relevance to the characters and the relationships.  The sex scenes are meaningful and tell a story.  They have significance in the overall story.  The emotions on the characters faces is just as important as their bodies or even more so.  These sex scenes feel ACTUALLY INTIMATE and that’s VERY RARE.

And they are super explicit.  The extended version of the show is 21+ and yeah...this is definitely adults only content.  But mostly because they don’t shy away from the realities of what is happening.  Like, yeah, you know what sex act is occurring and it’s not all penetration.  I’m going to stop talking about the sex now because I’m probably going to do a post all about that.  I have a lot of feelings about it, as someone very concerned with the portrayal of sex and sex positivity.  But finally the last thing I’ll say is that if you’ve ever wanted to see good fanfic sex scenes on screen, this is the closest thing I’ve ever seen.

The show is very queer.  As I mentioned above, pretty much everyone in the show is casually queer as if that’s just the default.  Now that’s sorta because it’s in weird BL land, but also...something about the representation feels like there have been queer hands on it.  Now, I can’t obviously speak to the sexual or gender identities of anyone involved with the show.  I’m not pointing to anyone in particular with this.  But the way that there’s no homophobia onscreen, the way everyone just accepts “you love who you love”, the way there’s no gay panic, the way there’s a variation of the way gender is presented, with men of a wide range of feminine traits on display, the gnc characters... it’s a thing.

I was originally VERY on guard about the representation in this show, especially when it came to stereotypes, but then the show just sorta kept not doing the stereotypical thing and exceeding my expectations. 

Finally, the show is fun.  The tone bounces all over the damn place enough to give you emotional whiplash, but it’s almost always a fun ride if you just relax and shrug and go along with it.  The entire ensemble will win your heart and make you fond of them and ultimately you just have to root for this crazy, bizarre, unique little show that could.

Where to watch:  As far as I know, right now the only way to watch the show legally is with iQiyi VIP.  There may be some episodes up on YouTube but I think they are only the edited versions?  You want the extended ones, trust me.

However if you cannot access it through official channels for some reason, a quick search will find it elsewhere.  (I include this because usually I get a crapton of comments about how to watch a series.  So please...search engine folks.)

[three--rings]

Word of Honor: Watch It Already

Yeah it’s time to do a rec post for real.  Because seriously, y’all, join me.

NOTE: All gifs in this post were made by @jingyans​, who very graciously allowed me to use them.  Please do not repost and go see her blog for all the gorgeousness!

What is it?

Word of Honor/ Shan He Ling/ 山河令 is a Chinese drama series with 36 episodes currently in the process of airing.  It is based on a danmei/BL webnovel by Priest called 天涯客/ Tian Ye Ke/ Faraway Wanderers.  (Which I have not yet read, so everything in this post will be based solely on the show as aired up to ep 11.)

It’s set in Fantasy Ancient China, much like previous popular series The Untamed and is part of the same general genre. 

What’s it about?

Okay.  So Zhou Zishu was the leader of the Window of Heaven/Tian Chuang, an organization of spies and assassins who worked for a prince.

He saw basically everyone he cared about/his entire sect killed for the organization, and he decides he wants out, but there’s no leaving alive.  He essentially manages to find a loophole by using a cruel fantasy method to basically slow poison himself, guaranteeing his death in three years.  But he’s free. 

Cut to six months later, when he’s living his best life being completely drunk in a gutter, disguised with a fake tan, terrible beard and general squalor.  He draws the attention of a mysterious gentleman, our love interest Wen Kexing.

Wen Kexing completely fixates on Zhou Zishu (or Zhou Xu, as he introduces himself), declaring him incredibly beautiful, despite his rough state, and starts a bit of light stalking.

These two have a lot of humorous bantering around, before eventually stumbling into the plot in the form of a young teen boy who is the only surviving member of his brutally murdered clan.  They are tasked with taking him to someone trustworthy and thus the two equally mysterious warriors now have an adopted son together. 

That’s the basic set-up, and the show is pretty much evenly split between really adorable flirting, wacky hijinks, and operatic political drama plot.  All of these typically involve fight scene choreography.  Though, to be fair, I’ve seen less than a third of the show at this point, though I have something of a feel for what is coming from people watching it without English subs.

So...about that romance?

Look, there’s no beating around the bush here, I really can’t imagine being into this show if you’re not into the idea of a prominent romance between two male characters.  The novel, being danmei, is blatantly a queer romance, but this is China, which means censorship. 

**And I’m only saying this because this is tumblr, and no one cares what we think here, but, look, it’s a freaking miracle this show passed censorship because it is NOT subtle at all in its gayness.  The plot...really doesn’t make sense without a romantic aspect, and it’s really hard to miss.  It’s so blatant, that it’s hard to watch without remarking on it, which means a lot of people are afraid of the show being pulled or edited by the government before it’s done airing.  There’s precedence for that happening.  Seemingly even the makers are concerned, hence them releasing 9 episodes a week, up from the original 4.  So please, if you do watch it, don’t go yelling in the comments or on twitter or wherever about how it’s showing up the Chinese government’s censorship or whatever because that’s putting people’s careers in real danger, not to mention harming the show.**

ANYWAY.  The romance involves a HUGE amount of flirting, mostly initially from WKX to ZZS, but fairly soon they start throwing around the word “zhiji” aka “soulmate” to describe what they mean to each other.  If this seems very blatantly romantic, it IS, but it can also describe a platonic connection, which is how they manage to get away with this.  Still, it’s swoon-worthy honestly.  The mood for me is a very good period romance, because I’m wildly flailing about their sleeves touching or hands brushing over here, so if that’s your jam, please join us.

I’m going to get into slightly more spoilers under a cut, because I think it’s very fun to watch the show without knowing ANYTHING about it, but if you need further convincing/specifics please follow me.

The show also seems to involve a lot of alternating fluff and angst, which, let’s be honest here, is kinda what we like right?  It seems like they don’t want to keep us in pain for more than an episode or so without some resolution, but then new pain happens again.  These two break up and get back together a lot, is what I’m saying. 

Why should I watch it?

Like most good danmei, the show balances deep romance with interesting and exciting plot, but the characters are the real stand-outs here.  Both male leads are older than your average drama protagonists, somewhere close to 30.  And they are both essentially villains.  Not just characters with dark pasts, but really the bad guys of other people’s stories.  The novel is actually a sequel to a totally different romance, and at least ZZS was an antagonist in that story. 

(Above: Evil is a good look on Wen Kexing.)

But here we have two very morally dubious characters: one who has given up that life and one who is still actively causing harm, and the story is about how they connect and change as a result.  (Again, I’m drawing slightly on what others have said of where the story is going and also just making assumptions.) 

If you have a moral problem with loving and shipping dark characters, this isn’t the show for you, no matter how cute it may appear.  This isn’t a “pure” couple, no matter how little on-screen sexuality we will get.  But if you love exploring morality and complicated characters who don’t always make the right choices, like I do, this is Your Thing.

Thankfully, the scriptwriter has come out and said there will be a happy ending for the main couple, at least.  So there’s that to hold on to as we face the angst and pain that is inevitably coming.  (From the novel I hear, yes, there’s some serious suffering in store.) A lot of us thought the show looked light and fun and now...we’re gonna be in pain.  So consider this fair warning as well. 

There’s also a cast of very easy to like side characters, in particular the “kids” A-Xiang (WKX’s servant) and Cheng Ling, the boy they rescue.  There’s also a colorful cast of villains that have huge amounts of style if nothing else. 

Downsides?

So the show was made on a VERY limited budget.  Overall I think they did a fantastic job.  But the seams DO show from time to time.  There’s not a lot of CGI (which is a good thing imo) but sometimes there are very obvious places they didn’t have the resources they needed, like crowd scenes made of the same 4 actors cut and pasted again and again, lol.  However, I think they did a great job on the costumes for the most part, and the sets look nice. 

There’s also been some criticism for the makeup which ZZS wears in eps 2-5, his disguise.  He’s meant according to the novel to look totally different and ugly.  But in reality he has a tan, some small scars, a painted on beard, and is dirty and disheveled.  Making his skin darker and calling that “ugly” is an unfortunate trope. I think the criticism is valid to an extent, but I hope it won’t destroy anyone’s enjoyment of the show. The makeup is gone forever midway through ep 6. 

Where can I watch it?

I’m going to assume most people reading this will be looking for a version subbed in English.  That is available on Youtube on the Youku official channel.  As of this typing, they have released 11 episodes with subs.  There are no fansubs otherwise available.  The Chinese language release is somewhere around ep 20-something? That is available through the Youku website. I believe their release schedule has the last episode coming out around March 23, but we’ll be weeks behind for the English version.  (Pardon the lack of a direct link to YT, but just search Word of Honor and you’ll find it.  If I have links tumblr will disappear my post.)

So please, come join us in this hell.  It’s been a while since a ship hit me so incredibly quickly and a lot of people have the same feeling, it seems.  Give it a few episodes, and see if you’re not WILDLY in love by episode six.  (Before that I was in like.  After episode six I wrote emergency fanfic.) (Episode six pictured below.)

[three--rings]

Alice in Borderland (2020) Review/Thoughts

So I’ve just finished watching S1 of this Netflix/Japanese drama and, well I’m going to talk about it.  I’m not going to spoil anything major, but I’ll be talking about my feelings about the show, etc.

The premise is once again, like Squid Game, part of one of my favorite tropes: The Deadly Game (which I guess is the official TVTropes name for it, so I’ll just go with that.)  Our hapless protagonist is pulled into a strange reality where everyone is forced to participate in games to win more days of life.  So yeah, I’ve been really in the mood for this trope since Squid Game and that’s how I ended up here.

First of all, let’s get some trigger warnings out of the way.  Because this show has a LOT of them.  If you have issues with dark, violent content, this is not the show for you.  Every episode features a good amount of violence and death and moderate gore.  Like, a good amount of blood, people getting injured, but nothing really GROSS.  I can’t take heavy gore myself and didn’t have a problem with that aspect of this series, but it’s kinda...IDK Tarantino levels of violence.

It’s definitely a horror series, much more so than something like Squid Game, IMO.  Heavy on the psychological horror, which is my preferred type, so, this is why I showed up.  It’s got quite a lot of HEART-WRENCHING sadness to it, too.  Like, if you like tragedy and being emotionally compromised, I recommend it.  I absolutely couldn’t binge this series because I needed a significant BREAK a couple of times. 

Other less general triggers: one scene of (pretty lengthy) attempted rape, suicide and suicidal ideation, death of friends, depictions of transphobia and mass shootings.  (Seriously there’s a lengthy bit of mass shooting situation that is fucking EERILY similar to school shooting events and I’m sure that was intentional, but fuck....yeah.) 

One thing I personally was sorta dreading throughout was that there would be some sort of Saw or Seven-esque torture scenarios where people would be forced to harm themselves or each other, and thankfully there was NOT.  The show (and presumably the manga) seems to veer pretty decidedly towards the psychological and away from the physical.  Even the games that seem the most physical end up having sorta intellectual or psychological solutions.

So, okay, one of the differences in this show (and again manga, which I’m going to stop saying from now on) from other works in this micro-genre that I’ve read is that the situation is far more mysterious.  Usually people are abducted by some group/person and taken to some closed off location where things play out, but in this one, loser gamer Arisu and his two loser best friends are in the middle of Harajuku and then suddenly everyone else is gone and there’s no electricity and they are alone in an empty world.  The only place they encounter other people (at least at first) are in the game arenas, parts of Tokyo that light up at night to attract players. 

So rather than clearly being the act of other humans, this is already beyond the level of believably.  Everyone in Tokyo does not disappear due to act of humans.  So what is going on?  Is this somehow supernatural?  Metaphysical? Aliens?  Virtual Reality?  It’s clearly SOMETHING, but there’s not a lot of indication as to WHAT. 

And the tone for most of the season is...well, pretty fucking bleak.  I got the sense early on that this might be a show without much of a message.  That this might just be spectacle.  And while I found it compelling, and the games incredibly tense, I wasn’t sure I was going to end up LIKING it a huge amount. 

To contrast it with Squid Game, which I’m assuming most humans have seen by now, that show has a clear point of view and Thesis from the beginning.  It lets us know by episode two what the main point is going to be: “No matter how bad this game looks, the real world is just as cruel to the downtrodden.” 

On the other hand, I didn’t see a point in Alice in Borderland at first.  Other than, perhaps, nihilism.  Humans can be monsters, humans will do anything to survive.  Which isn’t, I suppose, a useless point.  But it’s not one that I thought would end up being super satisfying to me as a viewer.

But I have to say that I was fairly wrong.  And I found that the show gains more meaning as it goes on.  There’s still definitely a LOT about the will to survive and sorta taking a practical, survival-oriented approach to life.  And a look at the value of that clenched-teeth pushing past a point of wanting to die.  I mean, very much this first season is about Arisu figuring out whether he wants to survive at all and WHY he might want to do so.  What the point of survival might be.

And ultimately, I feel like the season does land really well, with a thematic tying together that works nicely. 

Plus, as to the central mystery, there’s a really well-done amount of development where more and more little pieces of information about how this world works are received, without REALLY revealing much about the basic underlying WHY of it all.  It sets up a season 2 (coming in 2022??) really well.

It left me interested enough to know What Happens that...I may be on vol 3 of the manga right now.  To compare the two...they are fairly close.  The first game is different, and some of the character backgrounds are slightly different.  For one they aged up the characters to be early 20s instead of high school students (thankfully because...some of the shit is even more disturbing if these are kids.)  There’s some blatant fanservice/sexism taken away (because it’s a manga from 2010 sigh...) and they made good choices like NOT having the main female character be in a school girl uniform the whole time.  Otherwise it seems a fairly faithful adaptation, though I’ve barely dug into the story.

And one thing that I mentioned in the triggers and want to elaborate on: this show has probably the most positive trans rep and most sensitive depiction I’ve seen in Japanese media so far?  Going into further detail would really be spoiler territory, but I’ll just say I was impressed.  The transphobia is via a flashback backstory and it’s pretty harsh, but it is brief and is used as character motivation in a way that felt sympathetic.  I’m not trans and not an expert on Japanese trans rep, but this sidestepped the typical unfortunate tropes I’ve seen in the past. 

So anyway, IF this sounds like your kind of thing I recommend it.  It’s definitely not going to be for everyone, but it’s absolutely worth a watch if you’re intrigued. It’s well made, with good acting and good writing/pacing/directing.   It’s really living in my head the last couple days...

[three--rings]

Hikaru no Go, the rec post

What is Hikaru no Go?  Well it is a manga by Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata, which was made into a 75 episode anime from 2001-2003 and has now also been adapted into a Chinese live action drama called 棋魂, Qi Hun, or Hikaru no Go (2020). 

I have watched both the anime and the live action, though I’ve never read the manga (except for little bits, like the ending.)  (One of these days I will, really.) So what I will be saying will be based on the anime and the cdrama.

What is it about?

It’s about a young boy who, through discovery of an ancient Go board in his grandfather’s attic, becomes semi-possessed by the spirit of a thousand year old Go master.  (Note the Chinese drama, for censorship reasons, make Chu Ying NOT a spirit, though he did die(?) and now lives in a boy’s head, so...) (Also note that the Cdrama changes all the original Japanese character names into Chinese names, so this may get a bit confusing.)

Sai (the spirit)(Chu Ying in Chinese) lives for Go and is on a mission to achieve the “Divine Move”, the ultimate Go play.  He leads Shindou Hikaru (the boy, Shi Guang in Chinese) into a game with a young Go prodigy, Touya Akira (Yu Liang).  Because Sai is the one actually playing, Hikaru wins the game, completely blowing Touya’s mind.  Touya becomes obsessed with finding out how Hikaru could have played like that, and training enough to be able to beat him. 

Hikaru gets involved in the Go club at his school and learns the game for himself, eventually deciding to compete for real without Sai playing for him.  He wants to catch up in skill to Touya Akira so they can play a real game.  Both boys are intensely motivated and basically obsessed by this rivalry.  The story follows Hikaru’s progress towards eventually becoming a Pro Go player, along with the stories of the friends he makes along the way. 

It’s essentially a sports animanga, but with a board game in the sport’s place.  It’s also SO so good. 

Characters:

Shindou Hikaru / Shi Guang

The main character, just your average middle schooler when Sai first shows.  He doesn’t know anything about Go to start with, but he has a natural ability to remember games and see patterns.  In the original he’s 11 at the beginning of the story and 15 by the end.  But in the Chinese version, I believe Shi Guang is younger for the first two episodes and then there’s a six year time skip to him being in high school.  But I can’t find exactly how old he’s supposed to be and I don’t know how China works exactly in regards to age/school/etc to tell.  He’s at least 14-15 ish for most of it, I think.  (The actors are, of course, in their 20s but they pull off teen pretty well.)

Fujiwara no Sai / Chu Ying

A thousand year old Go Master from the Japanese Heian Period/Chinese Liang Dynasty.  He was an instructor to the Emperor until he was falsely accused of cheating which led him to commit suicide.  After his death he was a trainer and mentor to one other go player before Hikaru.  He lives in Hikaru’s mind and cannot physically interact with the world or control Hikaru, though Hikaru sees and hears him.  He’s highly emotional and often childish, though this differs by adaptation. 

Touya Akira / Yu Liang

Hikaru’s Go rival, a child prodigy and son of the greatest professional Go player in the world.  Serious, uptight, and intense.  He and Hikaru are opposites in many ways, except the ones where they are obsessive about both Go and each other. 

Other Characters:

There are SO MANY other characters and so many of them feel really significant.  But if I start listing them all I will literally never get this done.  There are the families of the two Go rivals, Hikaru’s fellow students in the Go Club, then his fellow students when he enters serious training later, as well as teachers.  Then there are the other Go professionals of all ages. They all have significant impacts at one time or another.  I will say that the animanga stays more focused on Hikaru and Akira, while the Cdrama fleshes out the side characters in a way I REALLY enjoy.  On the other hand, Yu Liang is a smaller role than his Japanese counterpart.  Always in the background, but not quite as much of a main character as Touya Akira. 

Is it gay?  Or how are the ships?

Well...it’s not straight, lol.  The truth is that there are only really two significant female characters in the story, and they both are pretty firmly side characters.  There’s hints that Hikaru’s female childhood friend has unrequited romantic feelings for him, and the cdrama adds in a fairly significant het romance between two of the people taking pro exams with Shi Guang. 

So almost all of the characters are male, and there are a lot of opportunities for viewing relationships through “slash goggles” as we used to say. Definitely, back in the day we were watching for the queer romance.  Obviously, the most popular and obvious ship is Hikaru/Akira or Shi Guang/Yu Liang.  All versions capture the very weird tension between them that isn’t overtly romantic but is definitely treated as Very Important.  For much of the original, of course, they are quite young, so there’s really no real romantic content at all other than subtext.  That doesn’t stop fans from heavily shipping, of course, though pretty much all the fic I’ve ever seen assumes (correctly IMO) that it would take years after the end of canon before Hikaru and Akira would actually ever admit to having romantic feelings for each other.  (Also see this AMAZING essay about the implicit queerness of the show which I found while writing this. And this older essay about how clear and intentional the queer aspects are.)

The Chinese version is a little different.  Both because the characters are older and because the ending of the drama is a little different from both manga and anime.  The very end of the show begins to lay HEAVILY on subtext, having Shi Guang and Yu Liang become significantly closer friends than the original.  The last episode is WILDLY shippy.  And not just for the main rivals, but also for up to like three other m/m pairs!  They really went NUTS with subtext right at the end, probably for reasons of censorship.

Other than the main ship, the only real significant character to mention in a shipping context is Ogata Seiji/Fang Xu a young Go professional.  In the original he’s implied to sleep around with women, but people still like shipping him with others.  The problem is, there isn’t really anyone to obviously pair him with?  So I’ve seen people put him with the younger characters, which is...well, potentially problematic.  Or also Sai, in some kind of AU in which Sai isn’t just a ghost.  HOWEVER, his Chinese counterpart gets his own “Shixiong” (Senior “Brother”) from his training days and there’s some pretty serious implications by the end of the show.  Fang Xu/Bai Chuan seems to be the popular secondary ship from what I’ve seen online.  So that makes me very happy, honestly.  Fang Xu’s character is also much more developed in the drama and he’s a personal fav. 

However, I honestly think the shipping is optional to the enjoyment of the show.  It’s a coming of age/friendship/sports/drama that is very gripping and emotional.  The shippiness is pure bonus and if you don’t feel it or that’s not your thing it’s still a masterpiece of a story, IMO. 

So...they play a board game?

Yup. AND IT’S SO TENSE OMG.  So I think the anime actually does this best, because it focuses HEAVILY on the games of Go (so does the manga, I believe) but the filming of them is pure anime fight scene style.  The opponents are warriors and they’re super intense.  We get to hear their inner thoughts while playing, which is fascinating, and the SOUNDTRACK.  The music they put over go scenes is SO INTENSE it’s almost comical, if you were to see it out of context.  But the suspense and emotional sincerity of the characters means you stay on the edge of your seat.

See what I mean by watching this match from early in the series.

Do I have to understand Go?

Absolutely not.  I’ve watched this so much and I’m pretty sure I couldn’t actually sit down and play the game.  The anime when it ran originally included little go lessons at the end aimed at children, but I didn’t pick up much.  The show tells you enough to have a general sense of what is going on, but they analyze the games on screen when you need to appreciate something specific, and really it’s the DRAMA of it all that is important.

So what version should I watch/read?

Honestly, I think this comes down to personal preference. If you’re very into reading manga, maybe start there.  If anime is more your thing, go for that.  Or if you enjoy modern Asian dramas, go for the cdrama.  They are all good, with their own particular strengths.  I also think that if you end up liking either the anime or the drama, you will probably also enjoy the other if you watch it second.  `

If you’re very interesting in the shipping/romance aspect, I will probably recommend the cdrama (which is really ironic considering the censorship at play).  The only caveat there is that I think the second half is stronger than the first half so you might have to stick with it a little to get hooked.  There are 36 hour-long episodes, so the total length is not that different from the 75 anime episodes.  But it focuses much more on characters and interpersonal dynamic than Go games, I feel. Plus the ending is happier/more satisfying IMO. (Though the Go games in the anime are AMAZING.  Seriously. That’s something that is lacking in the drama.)

Any warnings/triggers?

Well, I’ve already mentioned that Sai/Chu Ying commits suicide in his first life.  But it’s only touched on very briefly.  There’s also pretty significant exploration of grief and grief-triggered depression at one point.  Expect there to be tears for a few episodes.

Recommended If You Like:

Ace Attorney (seriously there are SO MANY parallels!), Haikyuu!! (or other sports anime), Yuri!!! on Ice, The Queen’s Gambit (which I haven’t yet watched but you get me)

Where to Watch:

The anime is available on Crunchyroll and Hulu right now, I believe.  You can also find it pretty easily for free by googling.  The cdrama is available on the iqiyi website or app, and you need to make a free account to watch it.