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Contrast (Japanese Series)

By Golu
This is basically a high school BL where two guys who have nothing going on in common somehow end up getting really close to each other, and that's kind of the whole point of the title too. There's barely any drama or fluff packed in here, it stays pretty straightforward the whole way through. A little bit of friction pops up here and there, but it's nothing compared to what you'd normally get in this kind of show. Runtime wise you're looking at 8 episodes, each one sitting around 25-30 minutes. The two guys carrying the story are Akira and Kanata, and funny enough they knew each other's faces way before they ever knew each other's names. Kanata's the type everyone likes, always got people around him, popular guy, but there's this distance to him that people can't quite place. Turns out he had an injury that ended his football days, and that's what pushed him into being more withdrawn, and it only got worse once his younger brother got picked...
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Black Summer (Korean)

By Golu
This was such an odd film. It took me more than half the film to even wrap my head around on what really is happening, because as far as I could see, the film was about 4-5 friends just hanging out in their apartment eating, drinking and chatting. The scenes are random and distributed and have no regular flow and feels like random scenes stitched with one another. I actually had to read the synopsis to even figure out what I just saw and this is a huge problem.

Jihyeon works at the university as a part-timer, writing and making films. One day, as he holds an audition while preparing for his next film, he meets Geonwoo, a budding actor and a junior colleague from school. They share many things in common including not particularly physically affectionate with their girlfriends, despite being in relationship for around 4 years. None of them is gay but there is some sort of mental and physical attraction between the two guys. Their relationship becomes a topic of controversy in the university community, and to protect Geonwoo, Jihyeon claims that he was the one who sexually abused Geonu. How will the two men face despair and hope?

As I said, this film is all over the place. There is a whole lot of nothing in this almost 2 hour film. The two shy guys take their own time to make their first move. This sense of soft romance is so overwhelming that when other people finally discover the relationship, the insult takes on bizarre dimensions, which is hardly there in the film anyway. As for the actual plot, well, there's really not much of that to speak of. I'm still not totally sure what to make of the first several opening scenes. They're structured like a framing device, but there's so little concrete information these events could have taken place before or after the main part of the story. This feels like someone school project and is completely avoidable. (0.5/10)
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