Is there one? If you have the link that would be amazing.
I wonder if there is a sumi-e demonstration at the Japan Day in Dusseldorf. I couldn’t make it this year but hoping for next year…
How fun, thanks!
Okies, just finished BL Metamorphosis. It was a nice movie, though I don’t really feel like Urara had much character growth by the end of it. Like, I feel like we needed to see her being less timid, or being closer with her mother, or something. It just felt like nothing changed for her outside of having the friendship with Yuki. Also, mildly frustrated by the fact that Komeda-sensei never realised she was meeting Urara - she wanted to speak to the artist of the manga, after all…
And that brings me to the end of the list of films I was planning to see. Bring on the drama series.
Anime Supremacy
Rating: 5/10
It was ok, I got a little bored cause some chunks nothing was really happening, and it took a bit to connect to the main character cause they didn’t really explore her in depth or show much of how she was feeling other than annoyed/nervous at being dragged to events and that she cared about what she was making. Overall I think it was fine just maybe not for me, didn’t grab me much.
I did think maybe they could have explored how her motivations influenced the anime more (though I did miss a part of it maybe they showed more that I missed) but it seemed more focused on the outside process and working with people so it felt like there wasn’t anything tangible to be like “I want my anime to evoke this feeling and inspire, because of this, and therefore the result is this” which they did show a clip at the end of the finished product but to me it wasn’t really a WOW THE FINISHED PRODUCT. But like I said maybe they did do that somewhere and I missed it
Will be watching more soon 
Better be pretty soon, because you’ve only got a couple of days left.
Yeah don’t worry I’m doing a binge watch 
not all of them but aiming for 8
The other day I watched My Broken Mariko and loved it. I really liked the narration style with the flashbacks into their past. The topic was tough but well-told, I thought.
Today I watched The Lines that Define Me. I thought that the art was amazing, and the making of the movie was beautiful, but the whole story around it was a bit simplistic and flat - the master who cannot properly teach, the artist that doesn’t exercise his skill except in dire need, the girl who overcomes her creative block and the boy who discovers his creativity. Maybe I’m too critical here but I found it somewhat shallow.
Haven’t fully decided what to watch next, yet …
Watched BL Metamorphosis.
I love that Yuki picked up volume one purely because she thought the cover art was pretty, and then told her late husband “sorry babe I can’t die yet, I have to finish reading this gay manga.”
Urara: “Some of these are kind of… explicit…”
Me: “Which ones? 
”
I Only Have Eyes for You looked so good, I wish it was a real manga that I could read >.<
Forgot the deadline was so close! Watched the two I was interested in a little ギリギリ…
I am what I am
I really liked this one! Parts of it hit a little close to home, especially the friend agreeing to live with her and then backing out of the agreement… 
.
It’s really tough being asexual and not having a partner and basically continuously getting tossed aside by your friends because they prioritize their romantic partners over you, and just realizing that you’re likely never going to form any stable long term connection with anyone because your friends who aren’t ace are always going to leave you eventually.
It is a rather unique loneliness that is experienced by asexual people in a way that others don’t experience and often don’t understand, I think. Because for many of us, finding a partner isn’t really an option, and it’s so difficult to live in this world totally alone.
I think this movie was literally the first time I had ever seen that depicted in any media.
As an almost-30 person back at home living with my parents, I also strongly related to the main character in that regard, though thankfully my own parents are very good about not pressuring me to get in any romantic relationship.
BL Metamorphosis
I liked this movie alright! I thought it was cute and relatable in many ways. (I have a friendship with an older gay man in my hometown that’s pretty similar to this one. He gave me a fanzine he made in the 70s, and we’ve shared our fanfiction with each other and have bonded over shipping the same fictional characters.)
I liked the self-publishing/fanzine/同人誌 part of this movie a lot and was charmed by the print shop with the offset printing, haha.
However, I felt a bit cheated by the LGBTQ+ tag on this movie. Yes, BL is pretty central to the film, but not a single real person in the movie is shown to be LGBTQ, and it actually had the effect of reminding me why I feel so alienated by the BL genre.
I liked the cute age gap friendship, but it was very “straight girl/woman bonding”, which makes sense for the audience that BL is primarily by and for in Japan, but I felt personally alienated by it, especially since my own age gap friendship over gay media is between me, an asexual lesbian, and an older gay man, with the gay media sort of forming a bridge between our very separate LGBTQ experiences.
So the film just felt sort of lacking to me, I guess. As others in this thread said, it didn’t need to be about BL specifically and could’ve been about any other genre of manga, which is a good sign that it’s not really an LGBTQ film in any meaningful way.
Thoughts about BL Metamorphosis
Something wasn’t sitting quite right with me, and I finally figured out what it is: they said several times throughout the movie that “this genre is popular nowadays” and yet, gay marriage is still illegal in Japan. They’ll read about us, talk about us, fetishize us, and yet some people still think we don’t deserve the same rights as them.
I think the movie would have been much better if one or both of the main characters had been LGBT. But since they’re both implied to be straight, it’s just another case of them fetishizing us. I feel like they think of us as animals in a zoo 
I watched “We Made A Beautiful Bouquet” yesterday and found it highly moving and interesting. Yes, it’s somewhat predictable and formulaic in structure as Belthazar said, with weaknesses, but I think like the movie Titanic, you can enjoy the details and what they were trying to express even if you know what’s going to happen.
Maybe you need to have made similar life experiences, and it’s probably also rather for an older audience who have quite some relationship and work experience.
I loved how they bonded over a shared enthusiasm for books and film, and a dissatisfaction with the normal business and social party life, I think. Which is ironic, because business life completely consumed him. As he said, he only has enough energy to play a mobile game in his free time, he doesn’t even know if one of his favourite books of the past would move him anymore. I find this highly relatable, how work can completely wear down your creative spirit.
I found there to be enough interesting ideas and development for a full movie after a single hour, and it just kept going and throwing new perspectives and developments at you. One of the films that moved me personally the most in a very long time. Yes, the film has weaknesses (The amount of “coincidental” things they have in common in the beginning is a little ridiculous, and yes, it’s very predictable and one-sided how this relationship develops), but I think they put in more than enough interesting things within that structure. The scene in the diner near the end was very moving.
I’m a bit surprised almost noone wrote about this movie here, but I also think there are probably a lot of extremely young people here who may not fully appreciate the nuances of working life and long relationships 
or maybe they haven’t made similar experiences, or maybe the film’s weaknesses were too much.
I just think it’s a great expression of the clash of the creative spirit and business and social life (in Japan).
Will anyone be watching the dramas? I added a poll to the home post just in case. I’m not planning to myself, though.
I’m checking out at least one episode of each. Yakusho Koji along is enough reason for me to give Rikuoh a shot.
Sadly neither one tickles my fancy…
It’s been real y’all 
I’d like to watch both (and voted as such), but I don’t think I’ll have the time…
Shall be starting with 下町ロケット (yay, I can actually write that myself! 
) this evening, I love Hiroshi Abe! Well, at least I loved his performances in a couple of Kore-eda films, hope he won’t disappoint here 
I started Rikuoh yesterday. First episode was such a parade of failures for the main characters that it was almost painful to watch. I mean, I know they’re not gonna succeed from the get-go, because that’d make for a very short series, but the plot moved so absurdly fast - they went from “here’s a good idea” to “and here’s a functioning prototype” between scenes - that the show had to keep beating them down so they’d stay in their place.
Still gonna keep watching, though.
I’m going to try Downtown Rocket! This is competing for screen time with the EM (EU soccer cup) though, so wish me luck 
Okay, so… first episode of Downtown Rocket down.
I like the premise and I’ll stick with the whole season, but… a few observations, coming from someone who’s watching their very first Japanese TV drama:
- This apparently did not have a big budget - lighting, sets, and so on they’re all pretty cheap and it has that distinct “made for TV” feel. Not a big deal, just surprising coming from (recent) US and European shows.
- People are way too… emotional, or rather they express their emotions all the time in usually over-the-top ways. Surprinsigly, they seem to be more emotional in the office/business settings than at home which is very weird
Dunno if this is the norm for J-dramas, but it’s definitely very different than the “restrained” acting in Japanese live-action films. Guess it’s closer to anime? I haven’t watched many of those so can’t be sure. I do kinda doubt that’s how it goes in real life Japan, but then again… I wouldn’t know. - Maaan, the verbal deluge here is incredible, incomprehensible and almost dizzying! Before this, I was quite happy with how I’ve progressed with picking up words or grammar points from film dialogue where people talk slow and clear, but this one has put me back in my spot at the very bottom of the stairs, so to say.
Although I was a big fan, I stopped following football (sorry, US folks, I ain’t callin’ it ‘soccer’. ever! ) some 15 years ago, I think?
Now, our team was going into the tournament with high chances of losing all group matches, yet they’ve somehow managed a very cool 3-0 win in the first one. So now I’m thinking tomorrow evening I’ll tune in for the second match, although I expect that if I’ll be watching then they’ll surely lose I wonder if I can even remember all the rules!
Anyways, good luck to your guys! And to you with juggling that screen time