The peak of gay romcoms! The most influential JBL came back better than ever!

Ossan’s Love (2018), arguably the most successful Japanese BL, is a favorite of mine. It kind of suffers from being made in 2018 and that made me a bit reluctant when I heard it was getting a sequel season 5 years later; Could it live up to today’s standard? Or will it drag on and fall into that 2018 humor?

Well, thankfully, OLR has moved with the times and served one of the most poignant examples of a sequel surpassing the first season. Everything is praiseworthy in this new season. The characters are so much more lovable, the conflicts as silly or as serious they are get resolved fairly quickly, respecting that all the characters are adults who can, more or less, communicate and solve their issues. I can also see the influence of post-OL BLs in this, especially the focus on domesticity. Haruta and Maki’s relationship progress is adorable to watch and there wasn’t a moment I would change between them. Izumi and Kikunosuke initially felt too random of an addition of characters but by the end of the show I grew to appreciate them. Kurosawa this season was much more likable as well. The slice of life aspect is not dull, not even for one moment because of its comedy and occasional drama. I also still think OL’s has the best female cast out of most if not all BL, even if they’re not the focus a lot. Chizu and Choko are a delight to watch every time and even in their limited screentime they feel fleshed out.

Production quality is also much higher this season and it’s so nice to see the change it was able to make after its success. Keeping Sukima Switch for the new theme song was a great nod to the first season’s theme song. The final episode was so satisfactory that I don’t even feel like complaining about how sad I am to let go of this show. Even if you didn’t like S1 a lot you should watch this as I can confidently say it’s one of the most wholesome, well written romantic shows you can find.

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A faithful manga adaptation? More like a visually appealing, badly written AU

Cherry Magic is a simple love story that in its less than 6 years of existence has reached incredible amounts of success; the existence of this show is proof of it. With 5 adaptations out at the moment, unfortunately, this is by far the weakest one.

I will preface this by saying I did have an initial prejudice when this show was announced; the “fixed pairing” culture of Thai BL shows makes no sense to me and considering the acting quality of the show was what got me into Cherry Magic in the first place, I was worried it wouldn’t live up with a casting made so…cashgrabing-ly?. However, when the official pilot dropped I was 100% aboard the CMTH ship; especially at the promise of a longer adaptation, more faithful to the manga which was by now 2 times the length of when the JDrama first aired.

Well, to my displeasure, this version did not deliver on any of its promises. The first few episodes were great but as the show went on the writing quality went downhill. First of all there is no way this version is more faithful to the manga than it is to the jdrama. The director did not take interest (since 2021!!) in this story from the manga, let’s be honest. Scenes original to the Jdrama were used in this version. But I’ll come back to that later.

The writing of this show is childish. Which is ironic because it’s currently the spiciest adaptation.

CM is an overwhelmingly positive manga but that doesn’t mean the characters themselves are saints.

Achi is 10 times kinder and nicer than his original version. He has an entire support system in his workplace that isn’t afraid to show him affection. His social skills are fine for the most part. He is almost immediately accepting of Karan’s crush on him. I’m sorry but what is exactly his problem in this adaptation then? That he got rejected once? And as the show progresses he never gets over his passiveness as opposed to his manga counterpart. He does one or two things but it’s not convincing.

Karan on the other hand is a totally creepier version of Kurosawa in this one. I know I shouldn’t linger on small cringy details but the personalized gifts amongst his other behaviours were really too much. Achi being so accepting of it, almost basking in it from the get-go, and just occasionally getting nervous was so boring and out of character.

I don’t want to focus on side characters too much but I will give this adaptation that JintaMin were a delight to watch; a lot of times more than the main couple.

Pai and Rock is probably the second worst thing this adaptation has done; a fanservice ship made so fujoshi could self insert themselves about a guy who’ll accept them for who they are. They had already taken several scenes from the Jdrama so idk why they didn’t keep Pai aroace; straight representation for fujoshi matter I guess. Dujdao was a fun addition to the cast.

This show is a big WHY to me. Why did they have to follow the JDrama and the basic BL drama formula which resulted in such a bad pace? Despite what the JDrama will have you believe, Cherry Magic is a fairly fast paced story. For God’s sake the 20 minute anime is going at the same (and actually faster!) pace than this 40 minute show and God only knows how much this adaptation would have benefitted from that. Why promise a more faithful adaptation to the manga when the JDrama influence is as clear as day?

The high production and longer runtime might have tricked people into overlooking its awful writing but I will not fold. Episode 8 was probably the worst original plot to be written into an adaptation in the history of adaptations and it further proves to me that whoever worked on the script did not understand the original characters and the series’ charm one bit. For one, that precious runtime could be used for a lot of skipped manga moments; but of course not, because, again, clearly the source material is not the manga…

I seriously felt insulted at the way my favourite plot points were handled. It’s like they were afraid to let any negative emotion or any serious situation/problem linger in more than one scene, like I was watching a kid’s show where by the end of the episode everything was magically fine, without the stakes being that high in the first place.
There’s a difference between being a down to earth, sweet show that has clever writing and equally clever characters that resolve their conflicts and a constant stream of sugar and everything nice. After some point, it doesn't feel earned.

It's not horrible unredeemable garbage. It's overrated for sure and it's nowhere near the quality of other adaptations (despite arguably having the MOST resources) but what did it well, it did very well. The intimacy scenes were well shot, well acted. The cute affectionate moments between Karan and Achi were cute and believable and delightful when they weren't overridden by cringe. When they were faithful to the manga, i.e. EP6, their high quality production elevated the story. But that's literally it.

I understand that the characters had to be changed to fit the cultural context, this is CM's second foreign adaptation so I'm familiar with localization of the characters. But these changes resulted in a shallower version of the characters, giving me nothing to root for other than the show to reach its end

Spoilers for things I found extremely annoying

(EP1)Achi is supposed to accept Karan's offer to stay other BEFORE seeing his wild fantasies. Having him accept AFTER is contrary to his character.

(EP2) Achi's ear is embroidered on the pyjama shirt? And he's not freaking terrified about it? GMMTV surely you could have come up with a better merch idea

(EP4) Once again following the JDrama and the manga and missing the point of Fujisaki's character; You cannot mix the two different versions of Fujisaki. In the manga, she is a fujoshi, admiring Kurosawa and Adachi from afar, making scenarios just to pass time without ever making them uncomfortable. In the JDrama she is their friend. Her being their shipper (to the point she has them as her lockscreen, unashamed) and their close friend is just weird.

(EP5)The whole fiasco of Karan getting jealous of Achi and Jinta being all touchy in the office is supposed to happen after they start dating and cause Karan to get jealous of the fact Achi is never as open with him as he is with Jinta (and that leads to the magic reveal). To use that scene in an episode where he already got (rightfully) jealous 12 other times was dumb.

(EP7) Karan shows up at 5am. Instead of having the original scene where Adachi asks Kurosawa to help him pick out clothes little creep Karan forces a gift on Achi. Of course. He brings socially anxious Achi to meet his friend on the first date. And instead of keeping the iconic moment of Adachi intiating the second date to make up for it, Achi once again has no agency. Gives him the ugliest merchbait necklace known to man. GMM count your days

(EP8) Karan is willing to risk getting sexually assaulted to prove his love for Achi to their boss. Achi is as passive about it as he possibly can. Are we serious?

(EP9) The transfer is changed from one year (manga) to one month. One month and Achi feels like their relationship will fall apart. Can we please be serious just for once

(EP10) Achi is going away for a month but they have to train living apart instead of valuing their last week together. Kurosawa would have punched Karan in the face for that. And also Karan being outside in his car everyday was totally not creepy. Seriously.

(EP11) No matter how much you try to force the hetero ship you're not convincing me. Also just sucked the charisma out of Rock's character.

(EP12) Karin steps up to convince her mother to accept Karan's relationship with Achi. This is quite literally one of Adachi's most important moments in the manga and I cannot understand why it had to go to Karin.

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