There has been a veritable explosion of BL in Japanese Live-Action Drama recently, by which I mean a handful of series. Otouto no Otto has been followed by Kinou Nani Tabeta? , and Ossan Rabu, which was being advertised everywhere in Ikebukuro when I was there in September. I haven’t had any time to watch the latter two, although I expect I will, eventually. More interesting to me was the announcement of a summer 2019 Yuri live-action on Fuji TV. It did play on the terrestrial station and then was sent to FujiTV on Demand (FoD) where it now lives. In 2016, Fuji TV had run a lesbian romance called Transit Girls, but has not has a lesbian series since. Unsurprisingly, folks were both excited and ambivalent about this news.

Yuridano Kandano is…not bad. It is also not good. It was incredibly complicated, with many layers of positive and negative and details I wish I had someone to talk to about for like, 3 hours. And because in this series the devil is in both the superficiality and the details, a summary will not suffice. Nonetheless, I will attempt to summarize fully, aware that I will fail to capture the essence of this series.

Yuri (played by former gravure idol Baba Fumika, which made it really hard to find queer reviews of this series, since most of the reviews were fans of hers) is a young woman who is being harassed by a stalker. Her boyfriend Yuuji is unsympathetic. Her friends might be sympathetic, but she has not confided in them. One day Yuri is surprised to meet an old friend from elementary school, Kaeri, played brilliantly by Kojima Fujiko. Kaeri is a realtor and helps Yuri find an (admittedly adorable) new apartment, but then, a little oddly turns out to be Yuri’s next door neighbor.

Kaeri is exceedingly clever, and funny and generous and obviously (to us) is a predatory lesbian with her eyes set on Yuri. Is she the stalker? Kaeri inserts herself neatly into Yuri’s life, and proceeds to alienate Yuri’s friends. It’s uncomfortable until Kaeri is able to prove that Yuri’s best friends and her boyfriend have been fooling around. Ultimately, Yuri is able to re-establish her former friendships, but ends up being “shinyuu” with Kaeri over her older friends. She is also able to continue to work with jerky boyfriend Shuuji, and still be friends.

Nothing Kaeri does is okay. Everything she does is awkward and intrusive. When she first meets Yuri, she runs up to her and thrusts her face into Yuri’s chest in a way that no one would ever do…certainly not a lesbian.  And yet, she sees the truth faster than anyone else and says what she sees. Kaeri figures out who the stalker is (I mean, so did I, it wasn’t hard, there’s like 8 characters in this drama) and confronts them. In every situation she comes off as selfish, but ends up maybe being right? Kaeri’s own stories which are obviously manipulation and bullshit turn out to be real, and Yuri finds herself growing stronger to help and protect Kaeri. Then the story starts to speed up, as the stalker escalates their behavior. Kaeri breaks boundaries, hurts Yuri, turns out to be right, tells outrageous lies that turn out to be true…over and over.

The end of the series is not romantic, as the two promise to be best friends, almost immediately after which Kaeri breaks another boundary. …

It was a fascinating and complicated series. Kaeri is a horrible person and a good person. Yuri is weak and strong. They make a terrible couple but are good together. The stalker is not a bad person but does appalling things. Every single one of the 8 episodes gripped my attention, made me squirm with discomfort, and occasionally shake my head in wonder.

Even aside from the drama itself there are a few notable things about the series. At one point, Yuri and Kaeri are having a discussion about the word “Yuri” being used for lesbian things. Yuri wonders why and Kaeri tells her about Yurizoku originating in Barazoku magazine. There was Kaeri just casually giving the correct history of the word Yuri on a Fuji Television drama.  It was amazing.

Then that conversation continued, Yuri asks Kaeri “Are you L?”, a moment which was caught on an advertisement on the Yamanote subway in Japan. (If you do click this link, please be aware that this is a complete stranger’s Twitter feed. Don’t be weird at them. Thanks.) So that was also very interesting.

Much like Transit Girls, it’s hard to call this series LGBTQ. In both series, the lesbian character acts in a way that makes “lesbian” people look bizarre. And in both the word “lesbian” is not something the character identifies as, Kaeri here talks about herself as having a “broken” sexuality. Which brings me to the title. The phrase “nandano kandano” comes up in translation as “whatever” but I’d translate it more as “It is what it is.” Yuridano Kandano” kept coming up as “Is it a Lily?” which I thought was not correct, but it is pretty apt. Yuridano Kandano might not be LGBTQ, but it’s definitely Yuri.

Ratings:

Acting – 8 Honestly, if either Kaeri or Yuri had not been well-acted, this series would have unraveled completely. Both were excellent.
Story – Oh gods, I have no idea. It was good, and awful and amazing and terrible. 8?!? 3?!? I don’t know!
Characters – Same as above
Cinematography – 4 Can we ban close up kissing forever? Please?
Song – 8 Sung Si Kyung singing “Hachimitsu” was weirdly romantic for what really was not a romantic show, but it was pleasant

Overall – 7 because it’s not dire and not amazing, but it has both dire and amazing moments.

Also, like Transit Girls, the kissing is super closeup and dreadful. Japanese drama kissing is the absolute worst. Takarazuka absurdly fake stage kisses are better than this. For a romantic comedy, it was neither romantic nor comedic, but it was interesting!

You can check out the trailer on Yudano Kandano‘s FOD page. Ignore the kissing.