Archive for the Live Action Category


Who Knows Girls’ L

March 26th, 2025

Poster for the Chinese series Who Knows Girl’s L, showing the lead characters Cheng Zhijin (left) and Gu Yi (right).Once a rarity, live-action yuri series have now spread throughout East and Southeast Asia, most famously to Thailand but also to Taiwan, South Korea, and Cambodia. One major exception to the trend has been the People’s Republic of China, where the publication of LGBTQ-related works has been discouraged by cultural norms and government policies. Small wonder then that baihe (yuri) works (including many of those scheduled to be published in English) often are set in past times and make considerable use of subtext.

Thus it was a surprise to see Who Knows Girls’ L (谁知锦意) pop up on YouTube, set in present-day China and proudly billed as “the 1st Chinese gl series . . . for sapphic ppl like you and me!” As one might expect, it was not created and distributed by a mainstream Chinese production company. Instead it’s being produced and released by a group of film students in Shanghai, who have been very forward about promoting the series and raising funds for its production. (Their initial budget was the equivalent of only $2,700 US.)

Who Knows Girls’ L is still ongoing: it’s projected to be 28 relatively short episodes (up to 15 minutes long), with eight episodes available thus far; completion of the series depends on the success of the fundraising efforts. I’m reviewing now to bring it to the attention of fans who might be interested in following it, and also as a hedge in case the series goes on indefinite hiatus for lack of funds or other reasons.

But enough throat-clearing, how does Who Knows Girls’ L stack up against the many other yuri series currently airing or scheduled to be aired? Let’s go to the tape:

The plot is a weak point of the series, combining as it does a noxious trope, an implausible plot turn, and a power-gap romance: Cheng Zhijin, a young film studio project director who’s struggling with problems on her production, drowns her sorrows at an industry party and afterwards encounters an older woman, Gu Yi, busking on a public street. Zhijin meets her again at a bar where Yi works as a singer, drinks some more, then goes home with Yi and proceeds to have a drunken one-night stand. In the office the next day Zhijin is flabbergasted as the previous night’s fling turns out to be the chief shareholder in the studio, who’s now decided to actively involve herself in the company’s operations. The plot proceeds from there, as Zhijin and Yi try to navigate the troubled waters of an employee/employer relationship.

The production values are uneven but improving, marred by occasional lapses: a slightly off camera angle here, a brief mistake in focus pulling there, problems with color grading between some scenes, and some non-idiomatic translations. (There are also several scenes in which the faces of Zhijin and one of her friends at work look unnaturally white; I don’t know if that’s a production problem or reflective of a cosmetics fad among young Chinese women.) However, the series looks significantly better than one might expect of a student production. It makes good use of multiple location shots and has an effective soundtrack, with a banger OP introduced in episode 7.

Working actor Kaiyi portrays Gu Yi, while Cheng Zhijin is played by law student Qianyue. Kaiyi gives a solid performance, while Qianyue reminds me of Yoko Apasra Lertprasert of Blank: The Series—not so much in the characters they play (Aneung’s teasing and flirtation is 180 degrees away from Zhijin’s sullen passive-aggressiveness), but in seeing a striking debut from an unexpected source. As for the scenes between Yi and Zhijin, the director and actors have clearly closely studied GAP and its successors and strove to emulate their steamier aspects; if the results don’t quite come up to Freen and Becky at their finest, it’s not for lack of trying.

Ratings:

Story — 5
Characters — 8
Production — 6
Service — 5
Yuri — 10
Overall — 6

Its status as the self-proclaimed first Chinese yuri series and a crowd-funded student project is the hook, but Who Knows Girls’ L has an appeal beyond that, based on the increasing sophistication of the production and the performances of Kaiyi and Qianyue. It’s definitely worth watching the series, following the saga of its production, and (for those so inclined) financially supporting its creation.

P.S. Some final trivia: The Chinese title of the series, 谁知锦意 (Shéi zhī jǐn yì), contains some untranslatable wordplay that puns on the characters’ names: 谁知 (Shéi zhī) is “Who knows”, 知锦 (zhī jǐn) is the given name of one of the characters, and 意 (yì) is pronounced the same as 忆, the given name of the other lead character. Also, 意 has “intentions,” “thoughts,” and “feelings” among its meanings. So, the title can be read in multiple ways: “Who knows [Zhi]jin/Yi?” or “Who knows [Zhi]jin’s intentions/thoughts/feelings?” (Thanks go to Reddit commenter _fancy_pants for pointing this out.)





Kanojo no Kuchizuke Kansensuru Libido Short Movie (彼女のくちづけ感染するリビドー ショートムービー)

February 20th, 2025

Title image for Yorita Miyuki's Kanojo no Kuchizuke Kansensuru Libido Short Movie (彼女のくちづけ感染するリビドー ショートムービー). Two young women with flowers in their hair hold a bouquet. The girls with long hair strokes the other girl's cheek as they smile gently. In the wake of Yorita Miyuki’s successful kickstarter for Volume 2 of her series Her Kiss, My Libido Twinkles, she floated the idea of a new live-action adaptation of the series.

In fact, Kanojo no Kuchizuke Kansensuru Libido Short Movie (彼女のくちづけ感染するリビドー ショートムービー), a three-part adaptation, has been up on Youtube since 2022. I’ve been meaning to review it, and this seems like a good time to do so.

Let’s begin with a synopsis from my review of the Kickstarter reward of the first volume of  the manga: “Stuck in the hospital with an injury, Sana meets and is intrigued by Akane, a mysterious older girl who missed a year in school due to illness. Akane is a bit possessive, but Sana wants her to be friends with all her school friends too. When the chance finally comes to introduce Akane to her best friend, Mi-chan, Mi-chan discovers Yuri books in Sana’s room and impulsively hides, becoming a witness to Sana and Akane kissing.”

Right off the bat, this movie is a very decent live-action adaption of Yorita-sensei’s series. Pared down, as it is, to a mere four characters and a short running time, the emotions are very visible and the story moves quickly.  

Tsuboi Nagisa as Sana and Umakawa Moeka as Akane are excellent. Tsuboi’s smile is Sana’s smile, there was no question that we were seeing a live-action of this work. Akane’s behavior is toned down a bit, here and she seems less aggressively manipulative, while Sana comes off as having a stronger personality. As a result, one is pretty on board with them as a couple earlier than in the manga. 

Ratings:

Overall – 9

If you enjoyed the first volume of Her Kiss, My Libido Twinkles, this is a quick watch and a fun way to experience Yorita-sensei’s story.





Pluto: The Series

January 3rd, 2025

A promotional poster for the Thai yuri series Pluto. It shows the two main characters, Aioon and May, sitting on top of Aioon's van, looking at the sky.by Frank Hecker, Okazu Staff Writer

Believe it or not, there are Thai yuri novels written by Chao Planoy that are not part of the GAP extended universe; Pluto: The Series (streaming on YouTube) is an adaptation of one of them, from the powerhouse Thai production company GMMTV (who also produced 23.5: The Series). Unlike the other Chao Planoy adaptations reviewed here (GAP, Blank, and Affair), Pluto adds a mystery to the typical romance plot—though whether that’s an improvement is debatable, as we shall see.

Aioon (Namtan Tipnaree Weerawatnodom) is a tomboyish slacker working as a motorcycle courier. Ai is estranged from her younger twin sister Oaboom (also played by Namtan), and is thus surprised when right after Oom’s wedding (to wealthy heir Paul) Oom asks Ai to pretend to be her and break up with her ex-girlfriend May (Film Rachanun Mahawan). That night Paul and Oom are in an auto accident that kills Paul and leaves Oom in a coma. Ai feels compelled to carry out her sister’s last wish, goes to see May, and finds, first, that May is blind and, second, that she herself is becoming attracted to May. Ai decides to continue pretending to be Oom and not go through with the promised break-up. And thus the game is afoot.

The ensuing mysteries are many: Why did Oom decide to break up with May? How did May lose her sight, and is there any hope of her regaining it? What’s the connection between May, a lawyer, and Ai’s “motorpunk” friends? Will Oom ever come out of her coma? And most notably: Why doesn’t May figure out that Ai is not Oom, and why does Ai think she can get away with the pretense? The answers to these questions are revealed in the following episodes, so I won’t spoil them here. However, I will note that the series depends on a series of coincidences, connections between characters, and plot resolutions that are mostly implausible and contrived and therefore also mostly unsatisfying.

The appeal of the Pluto: The Series instead rests on the characters themselves and the actors who portray them. Here the series does better: both Namtan and Film are TV and film veterans, and both have challenging roles that they execute reasonably well, Namtan portraying twins with separate personalities and Film portraying a woman who’s lost her sight. Film also rescues May from being thought of solely as a victim of unfortunate circumstances, and shows that she has a scheming and conniving side as well, as befits a successful lawyer. As for their portrayal of the relationship between Ai and May, Namtan and Film can’t match the level of sensuality displayed by Freen and Becky in The Loyal Pin (or, for that matter, by Faye and Yoko in Blank), but they do make for a very affectionate and appealing couple, and they nail the occasional scenes of extreme emotion.

Finally, while I enjoyed Pluto: The Series for the most part, its existence does make me wish that Thai production companies would find more novels from other authors to adapt. Even the best screenwriters can do only so much with Chao Planoy’s novels, filled as they are with plot contrivances and sensationalistic elements. Other Thai authors surely deserve a chance to have their yuri novels become successful live-action series.

Ratings:

Story — 5 (too many complications, coincidences, and implausibilities)
Characters — 8
Production — 8 (the usual GMMTV professional work)
Service — 2
Yuri — 10
Overall — 7

Pluto: The Series is an enjoyable but uneven watch that struggles to overcome the implausibilities and contrivances of its source material and doesn’t completely succeed in doing so, despite the best efforts of Namtan and Film.





Jeongnyeon: The Star Is Born

December 11th, 2024

Promotional poster for the Korean drama series Jeongnyeon: The Star Is Born, featuring Kim Tae-ri (center) as Jeongnyeon. Other characters (from left to right) are the director Kang So-bok, the current prince and princess Seo Hye-rang and Moon Ok-gyeong, and Jeongnyeon’s rival Heo Yeong-seo.by Frank Hecker, Staff Writer

The Takarazuka Revue has inspired several manga and anime. Now comes Jeongnyeon: The Star Is Born, a Korean drama (currently streaming on Hulu and Disney+) that features an analogous 1950s-era all-female gukgeuk troupe performing plays based on classic Korean tales and featuring songs sung in the traditional pansori style. Jeongnyeon the series features Yoon Jeongnyeon the performer (played by Kim Tae-ri), a natural-born pansori genius who goes from working as a fishmonger to joining the Maeran Theater Company as a trainee and competing to become its new “prince.”

If you’ve heard about Jeongnyeon at all, you’ve likely heard that it’s based on a yuri webcomic of the same name, and that the explicit yuri elements were erased in the live-action adaptation. This is true: in the webcomic Jeongnyeon has a girlfriend, Kwon Bu-yong (the rightmost figure in the webcomic image below), who starts out as a fan of Maeran. There’s also a side character who was disrespected as a woman and decided to henceforth live life as a man. Neither are present in the TV series.

Nevertheless, Jeongnyeon is still of interest to yuri fans who enjoy dramas about the theater in general and all-female theatrical troupes in particular. And there is plenty of drama to be had: Jeongnyeon finds her quest to become a top star impeded by the violent opposition of her mother Seo Yong-re (Moon So-ri), who has a mysterious past and a hidden connection to Maeran’s imperious director Kang So-bok (Ra Mi-ran). She also finds herself beset by bullies, incurring the wrath of director Kang for various offenses, and enmeshed in a triangle of sorts with her rival would-be prince Heo Yeong-seo (Shin Ye-eun) and their would-be princess Hong Joo-ran (Woo Da-vi). Meanwhile, scandals past and present threaten the positions of current prince Moon Ok-gyeong (Jung Eun-chae) and her princess Seo Hye-rang (Kim Yoon-hye), and the future of Maeran and indeed gukgeuk as a whole hangs in the balance.

Promotional image for the webcomic Jeongnyeon, showing Yoon Jeongnyeon (center) and Heo Yeong-seo (left) in the trainee uniforms of white blouse and long blue skirts, and Kwon Bu-yong (right) in her own dark-blue uniform.The yuri elements discarded in the transition to screen reappear elsewhere as subtext: Ok-gyeong has the transmasc aura of the previous side character and with Hye-rang forms the troupe’s resident couple: They live in the same house, are casually affectionate with one another, and are even raising a young girl together. With Bu-yong absent, the show’s focus is solely on the Maeran trainees, and Joo-ran becomes a (very) thinly-veiled love interest for Jeongnyeong. Finally, in a rare example of heterosexual erasure, Yeong-seo loses the boyfriend she had in the webcomic and is free to devote her attentions to Jeongnyeon and Joo-ran. Almost all the remaining men have only minor roles or function as obstacles to the core group of women; the only other men featured, Jeongnyeon’s father and grandfather, are dead as her story begins.

As a show considered on its own merits, Jeongnyeon has a uniformly excellent cast, high production values, and a compelling if often bittersweet plot. Kim Tae-ri, who first came to fame starring in the Korean lesbian drama The Handmaiden, studied pansori for multiple years in preparation for the part, and it shows. I thought she played the role of Jeongnyeon a bit too broadly in some early episodes, but otherwise she’s completely convincing. Shin Ye-eun takes a common trope—the hard-working performer who’s overshadowed by an untutored genius—and makes Yeong-seo a complex and compelling rival to Jeongnyeon. Finally, Woo Da-vi is unjustly neglected in the show’s promotional materials, but her character is the emotional heart of the series. Joo-ran’s scenes with Jeongnyeon are some of the show’s most affecting, and certainly the most romantic.

As a story, Jeongnyeon harks back to Hana Monogatari and other “S” fictions, in which young women have relationships of “passionate friendship” (and sometimes more than friendship) with other young women, relationships ended by adulthood and (typically arranged) marriages. Gukgeuk itself lost its mass audience to television and its elite audience to Western opera (exemplified by Yeong-seo’s mother, a famous soprano who looks down on Yeong-seo’s chosen career). So, even if other events didn’t intrude, the time the characters would have with each other would be fleeting.

As a production, Jeongnyeon was created in a modern society marked by often violent misogyny and homophobia, and can be seen as a response to that. The series was written and directed by women, and its main cast are all women. The women in Jeongnyeon start and staff their own troupes and put on their own theatrical productions. They claim for themselves ownership of stories that are classics of Korean culture and sing in a style originally pioneered by men, a style that in its frequent harshness is the very opposite of the ultra-feminine stylings of the stereotypical present-day idol.

While yuri fans have bemoaned the changes made in the transition from webcomic to live-action, the mainstream South Korean audience has taken this example of “quiet feminism” to heart and propelled the show to high ratings and the number 1 position in its time slots. If Jeongnyeon: The Star Is Born is anywhere near as popular outside South Korea—as it deserves to be—perhaps one day there’ll be an official English release of the webcomic, and we can experience the story of Jeongnyeon as it was originally conceived.

Ratings:

Story — 7 (a bit too much coincidence in the initial setup, and a somewhat flat ending)
Characters — 9 (complex characters vividly brought to life)
Production — 9 (impressive recreations of multiple theatrical productions)
Service — 1 (Ok-gyeong in a suit and fedora counts, I think)
Yuri — 5 (the subtext is strong with this one)

Overall — 8 (a kiss apparently left on the cutting-room floor might have made this a 9)

Yuri fans who can look past the (self-)censorship of a canon yuri story will find an entertaining and emotionally resonant drama elevated by standout performances by Kim Tae-ri and the other leads, along with splendid recreations of classic gukgeuk performances.

Note: If you want to further explore the real-life history of all-female theater in Korea, see Ha Ju-yong, “Female Masculinity and Cultural Symbolism: A History of Yeoseong gukgeuk, the All-Female Cast Theatrical Genre,” The Review of Korean Studies 24, no. 2 (December 2021), 107-144, doi: 10.25024/review.2021.24.2.107. This open-access article has a wealth of detail, including promotional posters and ads, photographs of performers, and even example sheet music for one of the songs.





Affair, Streaming on Youtube

October 30th, 2024

Promotion poster for the Thai yuri series Affair, showing the two characters Wan (Lookmhee) and Pleng (Sonya) holding each other.

by Frank Hecker, Okazu Staff Writer

After GAP and Blank we now have Affair, a recently completed Thai live-action yuri series available on YouTube. Like those series, Affair is based on a novel by Chao Planoy, interconnected with the other two, although the connection is rather minimal and barely touched on. It tells the story of Pleng (Sonya Saranphat Pedersen), the pampered daughter of a wealthy family, and Wan (Lookmhee Punyapat Wangpongsathaporn), the daughter of Pleng’s family’s housekeeper.

The two girls are fast friends, and perhaps more than friends: Wan is besotted with Pleng and openly declares her love. Pleng—though clearly in love herself—is more hesitant, and pushes Wan to get a boyfriend, in the person of fellow student Ek (Pop Pataraphol Wanlopsiri), who doggedly pursues Wan every chance he gets.

Then their life together is interrupted by a series of tragic events that separate the girls. Wan goes on to become a doctor while Pleng tries to make a living as a musician, until their paths cross again thirteen years later. In a perfect world the two women would mutually declare their love, resume their relationship, and live happily ever after. However, at this point we’re only four episodes into an 8-episode series, and there’s a lot more drama (and melodrama) to come, courtesy of Wan’s and Pleng’s bruised feelings, battered by the circumstances of their separation, the presence of Ek, who’s still hanging around like a bad case of the flu, and Wan’s mother (Um Apasiri Nitibhon, as toxic here as she was as Lada’s mother in The Secret of Us).

Lookhmee and Sonya (collectively “LMSY”) play well together, one of the better couples in Thai live-action yuri. Lookhmee has a delicate beauty that the camera loves, and particularly excels in portraying Wan’s times of anger and despair—which occur fairly frequently. Sonya has more of a “girl next door” vibe, a vibe she subverts as Pleng and Wan tease and flirt with each other—again, the show has a lot of that, and they do it well. Lookmhee and Sonya both do a good job of portraying characters who are flawed in various ways: Wan, traumatized by her separation from Pleng, is overly possessive and prone to fits of jealousy, while Pleng often hides her feelings and is reluctant to commit.

Affair was produced by Change2561, a sister company to BL powerhouse GMMTV and the same company that produced Love Bully. The production is high-quality, with often inventive cinematography, good background music, and a blessed absence of annoying sound effects and “comic” relief. However, being based on a Chao Planoy novel, Affair has more than its fair share of over-the-top drama, including a would-be kiss interrupted in the most melodramatic manner possible. Like season 2 of Blank, Affair also hits its peak short of the finish line, frittering away some of its remaining time on a pointless BL moment and one last bit of interpersonal drama.

Ratings:

Story — 5 (not one [redacted] by [redacted] scene but two, and a [redacted] subplot to top it off)
Characters — 7 (some of both Wan’s and Pleng’s behavior is hard to understand at times)
Production — 8
Service — 4
Yuri — 10
Overall — 7 (1 point deducted for the Ek subplot)

Affair is a worthy companion to GAP and Blank in the Chao Planoy Extended Universe, although those allergic to melodrama should note that Affair goes harder on it than either of those series.