Archive for the Live Action Category


Pink Theory GAP The Series (ทฤษฎีสีชมพู GAP The series)

November 27th, 2022

Mon is excited, she’s starting her new job at the company run by Sam, on whom she has had a crush since she was a child. But the kind Sam she remembers from when they were young, has turned into a bitter and mean-spirited woman, a person who apparently delights in making the people around her miserable.

Caught in a passive-aggressive relationship with her crush, Mon is trying to figure out how to be what she wants to be to Sam, while Sam doesn’t seem to know what she wants, at all. What we, the viewers can see, is that Sam is living in a emotionally abusive environment, with a sadistic and unyielding grandmother who has given her a deadline on her dreams.

Pink Theory GAP The Series (ทฤษฎีสีชมพู GAP The series), is a live-action Yuri series based on the novel of the same name by Chaoplanoy. This series is streaming on the Idol Factory official channel on YouTube, with English subtitles, with a new episode every Saturday night Thai time. This series had pretty solid marketing and a positive response to the trailers, so I was expecting something pretty good. Now that I’ve watched the first two episodes, I think I can safely say that we’re getting something that is, in fact, pretty good. ^_^

Becky Armstrong plays Mon and Freen plays Sam. Both are doing a decent job with their characters, and there is pretty good tension between them, even aside from the slow, belabored, lingering still moments when they come within 6 inches of each other. Also good is the supporting cast, especially Mon’s coworkers, who live in fear of Sam’s whimsy.  Several of the actors are known to me from the previous Idol Factory series I watched. It’s kind of nice to see “familiar” faces in different roles. I quite like Yha in this story, she’s definitely our greek chorus and rather dry. I’m also pleased that Sam has some friends, and we – rather unusually for live action – are introduced to a butch lesbian as well as the usual crop of very femme lesbians.

The negative side is pretty small. It’s a rom-com, so the comedic elements are excruciating as they almost always are. Drunk, screaming coworkers is not actually funny, in any format. My idea of things that make me cringe are different from yours, so I’m always not-okay with obsessions as a form of normalized character building…that said, Mon’s obsession with Sam is the basis for her taking the job and her overall character, but not the focus of the story. Furthermore, Mon isn’t a morose or weepy character and it’s very easy to like and support her, which I think works to the story’s advantage. I describe the story as Devil Wears Prada with social consciousness.

On the positive side, the characters have some depth; there are reasons that Sam is an abusive jerk and that Mon won’t put up with it, even though it breaks her heart to have Sam look her the eye and have no idea who she is. There is also clearly a side plot or two, I’m pretty sure Sam’s fiance Kirk is setting her up for failure. But going in to this knowing they will get together and it’s going to become socially conscious, gives me hope that there will be even more depth.  I’m looking forward to the final boss confrontation and if they will defeat Evil Grandma,. (They clearly will, I’m just pretending there’s some doubt.)

As the first fully Yuri Thai Live-Action, I’ve got to give props to Pink Theory GAP The Series…they’ve set a pretty high benchmark.

Ratings:

Cinematography – 7 Tropey, but decent
Characters – 7 Same, with Mon being so likeable that it all works
Story – 7 Same. It’s a rom-com, until it becomes a drama.
Yuri – 8 It’s pretty strong off the mark, but I’ll give it somewhere to go when they become lovers
Service – 4 A little here and there. Not grotesque, just “sexy” in a very thin definition of what makes a thing sexy,

Overall  – A strong 7 with room to go up.

At some point, I have going to have to read the novel, aren’t I? ^_^





Batwoman, Season 3 on CW

March 6th, 2022

Wow.

Blah blah blah, I’m not a DC gal, Batman is boring, blah blah. We’ve been through that before. But. This season has convinced me otherwise.

I thought Kate Kane was a fine Batwoman in Season 1. I was glad she had her story told and the points were made. And I was super glad to get past the Alice arc, with its so many handwaves. It was good stuff. Season 2 capitalized on the strengths of the cast and weaknesses of the story. It was better stuff.  In my review  of Season 2 I said, “What had been an ensemble flapping around Kate, waiting for her to listen to any of them, has now coalesced into a solid team looking for Kate (whatevs) and fighting new and different baddies, something I can get behind, finally.” Which is pretty much what happens. And now we reach Season 3 of Batwoman and I have not stopped thinking about it since I began to watch. It was one of the best live-action shows I’ve watched in a long while. Mostly because the cast is killing it.

Javicia Leslie’s Ryan Wilder is likable, smart, strong and vulnerable. The story uses those vulnerabilities without hesitation, but the story is not about torturing Ryan. Nope, instead Season 3 is 1000000% about Mary Hamilton and Beth Kane. Not as a couple, but as a pair of mismatched, deeply broken and needy people. 

Nicole Kang’s Mary Hamilton is…amazing. She’s broken, and breaking, and healing, and permanently effed up and likable and redeemable. Even when she is at her lowest, you have to love her. Early on the season, she and Lucas have a little energy. I would not object, except I believe you should not fall for your coworkers. (More on that later.) 

Beth, nee Alice. Holy Shit. Rachel Skarsen is doing a lifetime’s worth of acting with this role. She takes up a lot of space on the screen and again, love her and hate her, you always love her. Mary and Beth trying to patch a family together between the two of them had me tied up in knots.

Where Kate and Sophie made my skin crawl, Ryan and Sophie as the main love affair of the series works just fine. See above about coworkers for a caveat. But it, too, is a side story. The main plot uses relics of the Bat-universe, but with new plotting and characters. Did we need a new Joker? Maybe? But what we got with a new Poison Ivy was an outstanding arc, that will have repercussions into next season. It gave us a brief moment with Renee Montoya and Pamela Isley, but it left us with Poison Mary…and Alice as a sidekick. That was a hell of a ride.

Lucas’ battle with his long-dead father added unpredictability to his story, and Ryan’s own journey into her own family’s past drives the larger arcs in a way that succeeds.

These character arcs -and others – are overlapped so that they have consequences. It’s not “character development of the week,” and kudos to the writers for that.

Season 3 is about family. For Batwoman and her team, that means a lot of everything: Good, bad, extremely bad, and pathologically apocalyptic. It means love and hate and despair and hope. And, for the first time in my watching experience, it means a majority non-white, majority female cast, full of queerness, which I absolutely love. 

This was a fantastic season. you should watch it.

Ratings:

Cinematography – 8
Characters – 10
Story – 9
Queer – 10
Service – 7 Kissing, sex implied

Overall – 9

This team convinced me to love Batwoman.

 





Jigoku Hanazono (地獄の花園)

October 17th, 2021

Jigoku Hanazono (地獄の花園) is absolute trash, hilarious and unforgivable, and probably puzzling to anyone who isn’t deeply interested in girl-gang lore. It’s a movie tailored almost perfectly to my tastes. It will be released on DVD and Blu-ray in Japan in a few weeks, available through this transparent affiliate link.

Tanaka Naoko is a totally typical Office Lady in a large corporation that employs a large female workforce. The workforce has split into factions very like the “Ladies” gangs. Naoko, and her typical, non-faction colleagues, end up dodging the inter-departmental battles that break out between the various factions. Until one fateful day all three factions at her corporation encounter Hirose Ran, who transfers in and takes them all over. For a time, peace reigns.  But when other corporations hear of Ran’s power, they begin to encroach upon their territory, and Naoko is kidnapped to lure Ran into a battle.

And then the movie gets weird.

If you take a look at the official cast page, you’ll note the thing I like best about this movie…and the thing I liked least.

The thing that immediately become obvious, is the heavily embroidered gang outerwear, reminiscent of tokkou-fuku of Japanese motorcycle and scooter gangs, only in bright colors worn over office uniforms. The factions mimic gangs in patois and behavior as well, which is always sort of ridiculous in media, but especially so as it’s played for laughs here.

You’ll also note that one of the corporations has a gang in black and that all the women in that gang are played by men. This is something I have encountered in a few other gang or gang-esque movies, like the live-action Cutey Honey movie…the most powerful women are played by men and are thus meant to be grotesquely ugly and horrible.  I do not approve. First of all, women are completely capable of being grotesque and ridiculous on our own, thanks  In this case, it is again a woman who is the most powerful, so that’s cool. And the men are seasoned actors with years of yakuza dude roles under their belts, so that worked as well. Overall, it was no more than another eye-roll in a movie basically built out of eyerolls. All of the actors chewed up their roles with gusto, which helped the movie hustle along to it’s utterly ridiculous end.

A palpable friendship builds up between Naoko and Ran and it becomes the lynchpin of the climax, so I really cannot tell you what happens. You’ll *have* to experience it for yourselves. I will tell you that any and all Yuri is punted off the roof in the final, bewildering scene that is so gobsmackingly ridiculous that it is almost funny, but still really annoying. Naoko agrees, is all I’m saying.

There is an English-subtitled trailer from FujiTV, which I hope means this will make the rounds of western Asian film festivals next year. I’d love to do a watch party with you all.

 

Ratings:

Cinematography – 9 Perfect and awful
Story – 9
Characters – 9
Service – 0 Not really, but tropey gang fights is a kind of service
Yuri – So close, but no

Overall – 8

Really hoping for an EN release, but the JP Blu-ray is in my cart, baby.





Thai Live-Action Yuri Drama, 7 Project, Episode 3 – Remember

September 17th, 2021

Thai BL is having a boom moment and it’s worth noting that Thai Yuri is starting to develop in that same market. One of the most recent BL/GL series in Thailand is called 7 Project. You can find all of it on YouTube, and if you turn on Closed Captions, an English caption option is available. Today I’m looking at Episode 3 of this 4-episode series, “Remember.”

“Remember” stars Samantha Melanie Coates as Proud and Pannin Charnmanoon as Jaidee. Proud learns her boyfriend Tac has cheated on her. While she’s recovering from this shock, she becomes friends with Jaidee. a girl in one of her classes. As Tac flails at being honest, Jaidee and Proud become closer. When Tac forces a confrontation, Proud learns things that can destroy their friendship.

Before I get into the plot too much, I want to hearken back to the Afterschool Specials of my youth. These were always “very special episodes” and dealt with stuff that Boomer parents just would not actually talk about (despite the fact that they had been the sex and drugs generation /eyreoll/.) The defining characteristics of these specials were bare-bones writing, acting and staging in order to express teen drama, starring popular teen actors of the time. Watching “Remember,” I felt very much as if I was watching something equivalent to those Specials. The narrative beats were set up from pretty far away. I actually expected a final complication that never did appear, but the others all sort of slam down all at once towards the end and then it wraps up in a relatively satisfactory manner.

The Afterschool Specials are relevant here once more as the reason we all really watched them were the actors (and when when the substitutes couldn’t teach the class and showed them, instead.) The reason to watch “Remember” is, likewise, the actresses. They do fine work with this Ikea furniture plot design. Coates is a very sympathetic Proud, and Jaidee is very likeable, even as things begin to fall apart. Tui Tui Puttachat Pongsuchat’s portrayal of Proud’s mom was outstanding. Best character, best lines, best acting.

Ultimately the end of the segment is ambiguous, but leaves room for hope and that’s a damn sight better than no hope. One can end the story imagining that Proud and Jaidee might well have a chance to become something together.

Ratings:

Cinematography – 7
Characters – 8
Story – 7
Service – 2
Yuri – 8

Overall – 7

I’m pretty happy to welcome Thai Yuri on to our screens. Check out the WabiSabi channel for more of their videos and let them know you enjoyed 7 Project!.

Today’s review is thanks to gentleman and scholar Thomas Baudinette, who is my new pipeline on Thai Yuri! ^_^





Thai Yuri Novel Adapted Into Live-Action: Pink Theory GAP, The Series

August 23rd, 2021

Very exciting news via BL scholar Thomas Baudinette today! Thai Yuri novel GAP ทฤษฎีสีชมพู is being adapted into a live-action story, ทฤษฎีสีชมพู GAP The Series, in English, Pink Theory GAP The Series.

The synopsis on MyDramaList says: “Mon, a newly graduated student from university, starts working as an intern in a big company because she admires Sam, the super rich chairwoman since young age. However, when Mon met Sam again, her image of her completely crashed, since she was not like the media shows her.

Thomas adds, “Technically, it’s one part of a broader series primarily focusing on BL, but it’s adapted from an original Thai-language GL novel. The two actresses gained attention for featuring as supporting cast in some BL series but this move is designed to grow their fanbases. Series seems to be marketed to the same base as BL.

There have been some prominent GL sub-plots in recent series but usually not the series focus. This GL couple is getting equal billing to the two BL couples in the show.” The show this is part of is, according to Thomas, called Secret Crush on You.

Thomas was kind enough to nab a bunch of promo pics for us, so I thought I’d share them with you.

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I’ve been looking into non-Japanese Yuri recently and hope to one day soon talk to you about Chinese Yuri, but this news is really exciting! Thai BL has been growing by leaps and bounds, and I’m really thrilled that GL is getting some screen time. What’s more important is that the popularity of BL has been a pretty recent trend, so Yuri being introduced so quickly is a great sign…and so is the fact that the GL plot is being marketed to the same audience as the BL.

chao_planoy, the author, considers their work “Yuri” and there is a #GAPYuri hashtag on Twitter for more pictures and news. According to a commenter on MyDramalist, an English translation for this book is being planned. Of course, I’ll be sure to let you know when it is available.

Update: There’s a promo on Youtube. ^_^

Thomas also says, that “both Secret Crush on You and GAP The Series will be released internationally, in high definition, through select streaming services. Everyone’s best bet is to follow Idol Factory’s YouTube account for updates.”

While on the Idol Factory YT account, I found this interview with the actresses. It has English closed captions.

Thank you Thomas for thinking of us, and congrats to chao_planoy for having their work adapted into the very first Thai live-action Yuri series!