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Soul Mate (Japanese Series)

Is this technically a gay show? Even after getting through the whole thing, that's still kind of tricky to answer. There's never any physical intimacy shown between the two leads, not even a single kiss. What it gives you instead is something that goes way deeper than that. It traces an emotional bond that spans a full decade between two guys who are both dealing with their own baggage, and what they share basically amounts to being soulmates. The story moves across Japan, South Korea, and Berlin. Honestly, whether people want to call what they have a romantic relationship or not doesn't really matter to me. A relationship doesn't need a label like boyfriends attached to it to actually mean something. And closeness doesn't need to be physical to feel genuine. What this show captures is something quieter but way more powerful, a bond rooted in understanding, respect, and just showing up for each other. Across eight episodes, each running 35 to 45 minutes, this is one...

The Reason Why He Fell in Love With Me: Season 2 (Japanese Series)

You know when I saw the first season of this show, it felt decent. It was just 4 episodes, had pretty straight forward-ish episode and Masumi's Over the top reactions were priceless. So the makers came up with a special episode after season 1 and I guess maybe they got decent response leading them to make a season 2 of this show. This season is 10 episodes of 40 plus minutes each (so a significant change from the original season). Sadly, the show doesn't hold up to the potential and promise it came up with. In fact, I would say that it's probably one of the worst sequels made.

A quick recap of the special episode between two season. We are told that it didn't workout between Masumi and Toru and it's been three years since they have been separate. Toru is now a qualified lawyer and he eventually falls in love with one of his colleagues following similar pattern of love at first sight. Now in this season we see that this new couple is happy and almost open about their status. One day Masumi's mother comes to there office with a case that Masumi is being harassed by a new teacher in the school , thereby impacting Masumi's morale and even forcing him to quit his job. Being the nice guy that Toru is, he decides to take up the case, which means that him and Masumi have to spend more time together. When his new love finds out this, as expected, he is uncomfortable with idea. The case is eventually solved, but now Masumi again has these resurfaced feelings towards Toru and tries his best to get him back. What follows a weird situation where two men are trying to get Toru's attention, which also is slightly confused himself; but eventually he makes it clear that he has no feelings for Masumi and his new love is his real love now. The show should have ended just here, but in the last episode, a new suitor comes into picture and gets totally attracted to Toru because of his simplicity and niceness and openly flirts within. The episode ends in a hangover giving us apotential threat for season 3.

Let's start with basic problems with this season. First of all, of the every episode that lasts almost 45 minutes, almost good 10-20 minutes are sometimes spend in just recap of the previous episode, which was annoying while I was watching the show. But in hindsight, now that I am writing this, my suggestion to anyone who still ends up watching this is, maybe just watch the recaps in every episode and trust me , you would not have missed anything. IN fact, I would highly recommend doing that. Secondly, they changed the actor who played Masumi is season 1. To make matters worse, the new couple of Toru and his colleague; they have like zero chemistry. It feels like such a forced couple. There are also many random characters, like the teacher who bullies Masumi and his back - story. I was like, I don't fucking care man! We have some family members making appearance and focus on randomest of people. This was a classic case of makers not knowing what they wanted to do so they were going in 100 different directions. This season, if it does have a story, would have been incoherent, even f this was made as a short film. At least, it would have been slightly better had they kept the original Masumi actor. As of now, this should just be skipped. (1.5/10)

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