Archive for the Live Action Category


The Secret of Girls

November 19th, 2025

Promotional poster for the Chinese baihe drama The Secret of Girls, showing the four main characters.Baihe (Chinese yuri) is having a mini-moment. Seven Seas Entertainment just released its first baihe novel, the Baiheverse site is making steady progress on its project of licensing baihe manhua, novels, and other works (including the short film When We Met), and enough other works are being teased for licensing that what has been a mere trickle of official English translations promises to become a growing stream (albeit nowhere near a flood).

Unlike baihe novels, which (like their danmei/BL cousins) mostly seem to traffic in historical fantasy, The Secret of Girls (original title 如果有秘密) is a realistic contemporary baihe drama, now available on the GagaOoLala premium service. As it begins, young Xu Jingxi (He Lei) is laid off from her job, decides to go traveling (for a reason that the GagaOoLala synopsis spoils, but I will not), loses her wallet, ID, and phone while helping another woman, and ends up prevailing on older hotel employee Wen Shan (Sun Cailun) to let her have a room in exchange for working at the hotel.

At first glance the setup is reminiscent of many other yuri works: a free-spirited extrovert who’ll end up softening the frosty exterior of an introverted tsundere. However, Xu Jingxi’s outgoing persona is a cover for her suffering, the nature of which is slowly revealed as her romance with Wen Shan progresses. But the series is about more than the ills of one woman: the back stories of both Xu Jingxi and Wen Shan, and their relationships to their mothers in particular, form a sharp critique of a patriarchal society that demands that daughters show filial piety but offers them little or nothing in return.

Suffice to say, The Secret of Girls is not a series with a “happily ever after” ending, but it’s far from being “tragedy porn.” This is in large part due to the performance of He Lei, who takes what could have been a simplistic character and makes her richer and more complex. (As it happens, He Lei also starred in When We Met, another tale of a younger woman winning the heart of an older one.) Sun Cailun is a worthy companion to her, portraying Wen Shan’s slow and subtle opening up to friendship and then love. I should also mention Li Keyi and Wang Miao, who play hotel owner Ling Yung and bar manager Qin Bei respectively. Their characters support Xu Jingxi and Wen Shan in their evolving relationship and contribute a more light-hearted tone and a very sapphic vibe: The two women live together and are clearly in a relationship of their own, and Qiu Bei’s bar “Her” is advertised as being “Where Ladies Meet.”

My main complaint with The Secret of Girls is with its packaging: It was originally released as 24 five-minute episodes on the WeChat app, and the amount of actual content is such that it could have been (and I think should have been) released as a feature film. However, GagaOoLala is presenting it as 16 episodes, with multiple minutes in each episode taken up by a lengthy OP (which spoils many of the scenes in the series and is untranslated to boot) and even more time taken up in several episodes by an equally lengthy credits sequence. Regarding other aspects, the GagaOoLala version has at least one scene that was almost certainly excised for the Chinese domestic audience; it makes explicit what was already very much implicit in the portrayal of Xu Jingxi and Wen Shan’s feelings for each other.

Rating:

Story – 7 (a potentially clichéd and maudlin plot redeemed by the writing and acting)
Characters – 9
Production – 6 (points deducted for chopping up the material)
Service – 3
Yuri – 10
LGBTQ — 5 (not explicit but very queer-coded)
Overall – 8

The Secret of Girls is not an easy watch at spots, but it’s definitely recommended for viewers who are tired of relatively superficial or melodramatic yuri series (looking at you, Thailand) and want to see a more realistically emotional human drama. It also marks a welcome second outing for He Lei, whom I hope to see more of in future baihe series.





Witches of the Orient: Les Sorcières de l’Orient

November 12th, 2025

On a white background, four young Japanese women are seen playing volleyball, while the protagonist of the volleyball anime Attack No. 1 is centered, making the shot. The title, Les Sorcières de l'Orient, is red letters, with the Japanese 東洋の魔女, Tōyō no Majo is lettered in blue across the net.Readers of Okazu, may have heard of Attack No. 1, the beloved sports manga and anime about a young woman who rises to become a volleyball star. Surely, you have seen the classic image of protagonist Kozue striking the ball with fierce determination.

There was a real volleyball team….and real “oni coach”. Their story is recounted in the documentary Witches of the Orient: Les Sorcières de l’Orient.  I was able to watch this for free on the Kanopy service with my library card. It is also available on the Hoopla service if your library has that. 

In this documentary, directed by Julien Faraut, who watched Attack No. 1 as child in France, discusses the rise of a factory team of volleyball players, who rose to become Olympic and world champions. It is a movie of triumph of the spirit, and a tribute to Kasai Masae, Miyamoto Emiko, Tanida Kinuko, Handa Yuriko, Matsumura Yoshiko, 
Issobe Sata, Matsumura Katsumi, Shinozaki Yoko, Sassaki Setsuko, Fujimoto Yuko, Kondo Massako and Shibuki Ayano. Through archival footage, first-person interviews and scenes of some of the women sharing a meal and talking about the old days, interspersed with footage from the Attack No. 1 anime, this story had me on the edge of my seat, and I not mean that figuratively. 

In the postwar years in Japan, as the country sought to recover economic power, many companies provided jobs and housing to young people out of school and for women, before marriage. To keep employees happy and foster teamwork,  factories would encourage sports teams which, naturally led to competition. In 1953, the Dai Nippon Spinning Co., Ltd’s Kaizuka factory team, plus a few other factory team members, took the world by storm, ultimately winning 24 consecutive matches during a European tour in 1961, where they were nicknamed the Oriental Witches, by the press. They had mostly determined to quit volleyball after that, but the 1964 Olympics were being held in Tokyo and volleyball was making it’s Olympic debut. They stayed. And won a nailbiter of a match over Russia. I knew they had won and I was still holding my breath at the footage of the final minutes of the game.

Their story has a very sobering facet, as well. We all are aware of the demon coach from Shoujo sports manga and anime in series like Attack No. 1 and Aim for the Ace!. It makes for good drama in fiction, but there is no escaping the fact that these women had an abusive and horrific coach in Daimatsu Hirofumi. It is in part because of him, that bearing up against all odds, in all weathers, with injury or exhaustion was for decades paraded as the pinnacle of training in manga. We can clearly see that these women – who worked a full day and then trained into the late night – were not given what they needed to win, they were tortured and yet, they won anyway. Witches, indeed. 

This is a movie I had been wanting to see for ages and I am very glad I was able to make time for it. I hope you’ll fire that library card up and watch it. (And if you don’t have one, please do go get one! It’s free! It gives you access to books and magazines and ebooks, and movies and other media. My library lends things like sewing machines and telescopes and software. All for about 70 cents a year in taxes. So please, support your local library! 

Ratings: 

Overall – 10





Yuri Research Project: Yuri/GL Live-action Series

September 12th, 2025

Exciting news here at Okazu! We are launching a brand new piece of Yuri research for 2025! Okazu Staffer Frank Hecker and I are taking a look at the way folks who watch Yuri/GL live-action series online. 

If you have watched a Yuri/GL series on Youtube or streaming service, please take one of our short surveys. You are invited to  give us an email if you are open to further interview.

We are conducting online surveys in three languages: 

In English

En Español
Translation by Sara Amaya-Revolo

Em Português
Translation by Alice Coelho

Thank you very much for assisting with our research!
¡Gracias por tu tiempo y tu ayuda con nuestra investigación!
Agradecemos o seu tempo e a sua ajuda com a nossa pesquisa!





Whale Store xoxo

September 4th, 2025

Official poster for Whale Store xoxo, with Milk and Love in the foreground as Wan and Maewnam respectively, and View and Mewnich in the right background as Tonnam and Chompoo respectively.by Frank Hecker, Okazu Staff Writer

When last we saw Milk Pansa Vosbein and Love Pattranite Limpatiyakorn, they were playing high-schoolers in the oddly-named GMMTV-produced romantic comedy 23.5: The Series. They’ve now graduated to playing adults, in the oddly-named GMMTV-produced romantic comedy Whale Store xoxo, based on the novel The Whale Store by Snow Leopard and available for streaming on YouTube.

Many Thai series open with shots of the modern skyline of Bangkok. Whale Store xoxo instead highlights the gleaming Golden Mount (Phu Khao Thong) of the Buddhist temple Wat Saket, which commands the heights above the historic neighborhood in which the main action of the series takes place. A key theme of Whale Store xoxo is the contrast between globalized corporations and local Thai small businesses: Wan (Milk) leaves her job at a branch office of a Japanese company to take over her father’s corner store after his sudden death, but soon finds it threatened by the nearby opening of Mouse Mart, a convenience store chain.

Meanwhile Maewnam (Love), who hides her family’s connection to Mouse Mart from Wan, spends her days as a a lecturer at a business school and her spare time picking up extra cash doing odd jobs in the neighborhood. As Wan and Maewnam meet and fall in love, they must each decide in which of these two worlds their destiny lies. It could be the plot of a Frank Capra film, and Milk and Love make for a very Capra-esque couple. In her endearing gawkiness Milk resembles a young James Stewart., while Love is an almost preternaturally adorable “girl next door.” They’re joined by a group of veteran Thai actors playing colorful neighborhood characters.

It should have been a wonderful series, but alas doesn’t quite live up to its considerable promise. Part of this is down to the direction: Not content to let Love work her natural charms and Milk to respond to them, the show early on is somewhat heavy-handed in throwing Maewnam and Wan together: not quite the “I fell on top of you and we almost kissed“ level of cringe, but annoying nonetheless. The more intimate scenes of them kissing also seem somewhat stiff and awkward. This may be on Milk and Love, or it too may be down to the director, a man whom just this week was fired by GMMTV for participating in crass sexual conversations about GL series and actors on social media.

Turning to the writing, much of the series run time is taken up by a subplot involving two other university lecturers, Tonnam (June Wanwimol Jaenasavamethee) and Chompoo (Mewnich Nannaphas Loetnamchoetsakun). The couple have been in a secret relationship for three years, as Tonnam waits forever for Chompoo to come out to her mother Som (Thansita Suwatcharathanakit), the owner of a neighborhood salon, and acknowledge Tonnam as her girlfriend. It’s not a bad subplot, and June and Mewnich acquit themselves well, but  the writers’ desire to postpone the subplot’s resolution until the final episode means that a large chunk of the middle episodes merely mark time. It also means that the last episode itself is stuffed to the gills with incidents, including last-minute plot twists, and the fulfillment of Wan’s and Maewnam’s journey doesn’t seem fully earned.

Rating:

Story – 7 (a refreshing change from the typical Thai melodrama)
Characters – 8
Production – 6
Service – 4
LGBTQ — 5 (the show takes note of Thailand’s new legislative landscape)
Overall – 7

Whale Store xoxo is sapphic comfort food, not as delicious as it might have been (due in large part to chefs who apparently didn’t quite know what to do with the ingredients), but still good enough to satisfy yuri fans hungry for down-home unpretentious fare.





Ayaka Is in Love with Hiroko, 2nd Stage

August 10th, 2025

The promotional poster for season 2 of Ayaka Is in Love with Hiroko. On the left the actresses embrace, wearing Hawaiian patterns and a lei on the right Hiroko holds a blowdryer over Ayaka's hair. by Frank Hecker, Okazu Staff Writer 

The live-action adaptation of Sal Jiang’s manga Ayaka Is in Love with Hiroko! ended with Hiroko agreeing to accept Ayaka as her girlfriend. Although the live-action series covered all three volumes of the manga, its producers decided to create a sequel going beyond the original story. Thus we have Ayaka Is in Love with Hiroko, 2nd Stage, now streaming on GagaOOLala (along with season 1).

Any sequel faces the problem of matching the appeal of the original while creating a new story that doesn’t retread old ground. Ayaka Is in Love with Hiroko, 2nd Stage attempts this by moving almost completely away from the office setting of season 1 and focusing on Ayaka’s relationship with Hiroko and (to a lesser degree) Hiroko’s relationship with her family.

As 2nd Stage begins, Ayaka has been living with Hiroko for half a year. Hiroko caters to Ayaka’s every need, including making her breakfast and cleaning up after her, but (as Ayaka’s friend Risa implies) Hiroko treats her more like a pet than a lover. Ayaka wants them to be a “real couple” (i.e., to have sex), Hiroko is reluctant to do so, and Ayaka doesn’t understand why. And, quite frankly, neither do we: Hiroko offers excuses to Ayaka (she needs more time to sort out her feelings) and to herself (she’s worried about her “selfish desires”), but this part of the plot requires a major suspension of disbelief, especially now that Hiroko knows that Ayaka’s feelings toward her are genuine.

As in season 1, Hiroko’s ongoing misunderstandings and miscommunications provide the springboard for multiple comedic moments. But comedy isn’t as funny when someone’s getting hurt, and it becomes clear through the course of the series that Ayaka is more and more distressed and confused about Hiroko’s behavior. It’s almost a relief when the show turns to the secondary plot concerning Hiroko and her family (she’s still not out to them) and to the goings-on at Bar Kiyoko (where Risa’s new girlfriend Kyoko informs everyone that Risa has gone from a “clueless puppy” in bed to “a wolf who’ll bare her fangs”). But these digressions can’t compensate for the fact that the show drags on for too long. The plot threads finally resolve in episode 6, thanks to Ayaka’s actions and the innocent intervention of Hiroko’s young niece, a sweet ending that I can’t help thinking could have come one or even two episodes earlier.

As Hiroko, Kanna Mori once again excels at wide-eyed reactions, mixed in with more subtle acting in the final episodes. But the real star of 2nd Stage is Shiho Katō, whose performance as Ayaka is the beating emotional heart of this sequel: We feel her pain, echo her confusion, and cheer her on as she forthrightly declares her love for Hiroko to Hiroko’s sister and mother: “This is how I truly feel. There’s not a single bit of pretense.” Riria Kojima joins the cast as Hiroko’s sister Keiko, who offers some cringey (meta)commentary in response to Ayaka’s outing herself (“I’ve been really into Thai dramas, so I know a bit about this kind of thing”), while former otokoyaku Hiroki Nanami brings sultry sex appeal (along with advice for Ayaka) to Bar Kiyoko as lady-killer Jun.

Ratings:

Story — 5
Characters — 8 (+1 for Ayaka, -1 for Hiroko)
Production — 7 (the subtitles are occasionally clunky)
Service — 4
LGBTQ — 10
Overall — 7

Ayaka Is in Love with Hiroko, 2nd Stage provides a satisfying ending to the story of Ayaka and Hiroko, but it takes its sweet time getting there. Fans of season 1 should expect less comedy, more angst, and increased frustration at Hiroko’s cluelessness and self-delusion.