Color Rush is a Korean BL drama about two boys who meet at school and have their own struggles that bring them together. In the case of Yeon Woo, he was born with the inability to see color, living in only shades of grey and considered a Mono. When he meets Yoo Han, everything changes when he looks into his face and feels a color rush, giving him the chance to see color only when Yoo Han is near. He determines that Yoo Han is his Probe, a corresponding fated soul mate, in a sense.
Color Rush is an alternate reality of the modern world. Monos and Probes are common occurances, and they are often depicted on the news as tragic stories, usually the Monos losing their sanity to possess the Probe at all costs, sometimes under the means of torture, kidnapping and abuse. Yeon Woo’s own mother was a Mono, and has since gone missing, so Yeon Woo stays with his aunt, who is on a tireless hunt to locate her sister.
This causes Yeon Woo’s aunt to be highly cautious and protective, often making Yeon Woo change schools if he comes across any bullying as a Mono or she senses some danger about him coming out as a Mono.
When he starts at this new school and meets Yoo Han, who is instantly entranced by him. As his Probe, he proposes to teach Yeon Woo about all color, trying to help him cope with the onslaught of color rush that causes him to pass out. Yoo Han usually wears a mask to cover his face, but when he pulls it down and stares into Yeon Woo’s eyes, Yeon Woo can see an explosion of color, which is sometimes too much for him to bear.
However, Yeon Woo gets addicted to the chance to see color and he indulges Yoo Han. In the beginning he tries to stay away from him, but the allure of color and Yoo Han’s attraction to him become impossible to resist. Yeon Woo even fears losing himself to what Monos are known for, becoming violent and abusive toward their Probe in order to keep them all to themselves.
Yoo Han just adores Yeon Woo. Gif credit to kdramadaily on Tumblr.
Not too spoil anything about Yoo Han, there is a striking reason he adores Yeon Woo so much. Yoo Han has his own intentions for keeping Yeon Woo close, and he’s even willing to run away with him so they can be together. The two boys clearly love each other as time goes on, and even though it’s a struggle for Yeon Woo not to possess Yoo Han violently, the two adopt some kind of synergy that just makes their relationship work, even if they have to go against their guardians to be together.
Color Rush is just a fascinating series, and it has an even more fascinating world behind it. The series is only eight episodes long, and it really could benefit from another season as there are lot of plot holes and things left unsolved. For one, Yeon Woo never finds his mother, and the concept of Probes and Monos are so interesting, you are left wanting to know more about this world.
Color Rush when Yeon Woo looks at Yoo Han. Gif credit to beomgyu01 on Tumblr.
The actors are gorgeous, and they have good chemistry. The show has beautiful visuals, and the supporting characters have enough depth that you feel for them too. I definitely recommend seeing this show, but the only downside is that it leaves you craving more.
Cherry Magic! 30 Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?! Credit: Crunchyroll.
This Japanese drama was AMAZING. It is based off the Japanese manga with the same name, which is also cute, but the drama has its own appeal. The actors Keita Machida (Alice in Borderland on Netflix) is the handsome and popular Kurosawa and Akasa Eiji is the shy and socially awkward Adachi. Adachi is turning thirty years old, and he’s never been in a relationship or had sex. As a virgin, there is this urban legend that on your thirtieth birthday you acquire powers, and this happens to Adachi on his birthday. He can read minds when he touches people, and the magic turns his world upside down.
Adachi deals with intense social anxiety already. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be loved. He’s very introverted and finds pleasure in reading, his job at the stationary company and food. He doesn’t like to be touched or even to be approached. He’s too kind to his superiors and will work overtime to do other people’s work (just to keep the peace).
Since he’s hearing the thoughts of everyone he touches, he changes his morning routine and goes to work early so he has to touch less people, and he ends up hearing the thoughts of one of his coworkers, Kurosawa Yuichi, who is handsome, charming and seemingly perfect. Immediately, Kurosawa’s thoughts show that he’s overjoyed to meet his work crush in the morning. Adachi has no idea who it is until the elevator fills up and people push them together in an awkward (and defining) moment where Kurosawa is thinking about how lucky he is to be this close and he hopes that Adachi doesn’t hear his racing heartbeat.
The defining moment. GIF credit furuba on Tumblr.
Soon, as they all exit the elevator, Adachi realizes that HE is Kurosawa’s crush, and at first he doesn’t believe it. He thinks he might be wrong. Thus, he starts to have more encounters with Kurosawa that proves that Adachi is indeed whom Kurosawa likes. He not only likes Adachi, but is deeply in love with him, and Adachi can’t understand it, but through the series, Adachi likes being cherished and he gets to know Kurosawa more. He finds out that Kurosawa is not “perfect”, he has anxieties and fears too, and Adachi starts to fall for him as well.
However, this is all new for Adachi and hearing Kurosawa’s thoughts and confessing to him is overwhelming. I would even say that his “Anxiety” is another character in this show, even more so a villain.
Under some odd circumstances, Kurosawa stays with Adachi at his place for a bit, but it’s basically torture for Kurosawa (because he wants to be intimate with him). He finally confesses to Adachi and doesn’t expect Adachi to return his feelings. Adachi…takes some time to process things, pretty much a day, and he realizes that his thoughts are filled of Kurosawa, he likes being with him and he ends up running after him after work to confess. The two start dating and Kurosawa has the presence of mind to know that Adachi will need to take it slow. Everything is his first experience, and Kurosawa is more than thrilled to be there with him.
Kurosawa is a bit of a lady killer too. MeOWWW. GIF credit – tianphupha on Tumblr.
Eventually, as they continue to date, Adachi’s anxiety gets the better of him, especially after telling Kurosawa about his magic, not feeling like it’s fair to keep it from his boyfriend. He breaks up with him, and both men are just heartbroken. They even had a date set up for Christmas Eve, which basically eats at Adachi as he realizes he made a mistake.
The ending is satisfying. The scenes between these two men are sweet, fluffy and a slow build romance. The touches, the thoughts, the fantasies from the mind reading, and the confessions are swoon worthy and worth the watch.
There’s a side plot to Adachi and Kurosawa that is…kind of a let down. Adachi’s best friend Tsuge also becomes a wizard when he turns 30 as a virgin, and his reactions to the mind reading are a bit over the top. The acting is…um, well, cringe worthy. He starts to have feelings for a delivery person who warms up to him because Tsuge adopts a stray cat.
The cat is cute. The delivery guy is cute and enduring, and Tsuge means well, but he acts like a complete psycho.
I watched Cherry Magic twice through the 12 episodes and second time around I mostly skipped through the Tsuge scenes. He annoyed me too much.
There is also this adorable Ace supporting character named Fujisaki who cheers to the two main leads on. I kind of wished she would have more screen time than Tsuge. Her story was way more interesting.
This is BL (boys love) but it’s not explicit, just a tender romance with two adorable leads and a great story around social anxiety and not judging people by their looks. There are also a lot of lovely moments worthy of GIF reuse.
Too many adorable moments between these two. GIF credit sushishorts on Tumblr.
I figured since this journal is so quiet I at least should do some reviews of things I’ve watched or read. One of the things that I’ve been doing in all my “free time” other than writing and freelancing is make some progress on my queue, specifically anime, which I’ve been obsessed with since junior high (a long long time ago). I started watching the anime Gakuen Heaven on Amazon Prime, free to subscribers and 13 episodes long.
Gakuen Heaven on Amazon Prime
The perk here is Amazon Prime has a lot of free Anime to watch from Retro Crush, a digital rights company that has a lot of old school anime, some of it I grew up with and am happy to revisit.
I had never seen Gakuen Heaven, but I’ve started to really get into the M/M and BL community, whether it’s manga, novels or TV and movie series. And this month being Pride Month, it’s even more fitting to celebrate LGBT+ stories.
Back to Gakuen Heaven – this is about the anime ONLY. I know there’s a manga and RPG but I don’t have access to them, so I’ll stick to talking about the anime. This is about the Japanese audio and English subtitled version, as they did not have the dub available.
Amazon rates this as 13+ ages, so it’s not as explicit as some Yaoi anime can be. I see this more as Shonen-Ai (boys love) so the romance is mild and fluffy. As with most Shonen-Ai anime, the formula is pretty typical. It’s an all boys school, so there are no female characters. None. There are effeminate boys that could be considered girly, obviously the “uke”(bottoms) label, and there are dominate “seme” (tops) males.
The main protagonist is Keita Ito, who is an effeminate boy with large blue eyes, wild reddish-brown hair, and is shorter than most of the other boys characters. He’s specifically of the “fandom bicycle” trope, though he does have interactions with other guys that are interested in him or flirt with him, but his true love interest is obviously his childhood friend Kazuki Endo. There are other boys that don’t care for Keita in the beginning, but quickly he wins everyone over, even the scheming twins who antagonize him and basically just throw barbs at him and eye daggers. They don’t really do anything other than kvetch that he’s even at the school.
Keita is invited to attend Bell Liberty Academy (BL Academy, get it? Har har) in the middle of a semester. Bell Liberty is known for only accepting exceptional students that have a particular talent, whether it’s computer science, arts, or sports. Keita is completely ordinary. He is an average student and doesn’t have an specific talents. The only thing that may be considered his talent is that he’s “lucky” because he does get into certain dire accidents and comes out of them completely unscathed for the most part. However, he is still offered to attend by a mysterious “Chairman” of the school. With good reason, other students that have talent start to wonder what the motivation is to accept such an average student to their school.
Kazuki Endo is Keita’s dorm neighbor and immediately he dotes on Keita and wants to spend time with him. The two go to breakfast together, as well as dinner, and Kazuki watches him to the degree that he’s in love with Keita, even before he comes to the school. We find out later that Kazuki is actually the “Chairman” and he’s busy doing a lot of meetings and dealing with board members who don’t believe he’s fit to take the position. The Chairman relies on the Student council who is headed by the King, who immediately warms up to Keita as well.
In a short time that Keita is at Bell Liberty, he amasses some powerful friends, some of them who make passes at him immediately, like Nakajima (who is far too creepy and makes Keita visibly nervous) to Naruse, the tennis captain, who immediately claims ownership of Keita, is overtly lovey dovey with him, and calls him “Honey” and tries to force him on dates. Naruse comes on strong, but he’s not creepy, just an obvious lover boy. Keita tries to rebuff him kindly, and even cool and calm Kazuki gets angry when Naruse is around trying to advance on Keita.
Kazuki is the most doting (boy)friend. He’s possessive of Keita but it’s more enduring than excessive. SWOON.
There are other characters, quiet and reserved, who open up or have personality shifts because of Keita. Keita is a bit of a Gary Stu, but Gakuken Heaven, though obviously formulaic of BL anime, does not take itself too seriously.
Even the supposed danger Keita is in does not last for long, as his long line of student council or pretty boy friends come to his immediate rescue, or Keita wins them over with his charm – Jin Matsuoka one of them, whom was intent on slitting Keita’s throat at one point.
The unfortunate thing with the Jin Matsuoka arc was it was tacked on the end. Jin wasn’t around much throughout the whole series, but he appears in the last two episodes as someone who believes Keita is responsible for his lover being in a coma as the both of them had the same virus, but Keita was “lucky” and came out of it unscathed in childhood whereas Hiroya, Jin’s lover, is in a coma. Of course at the end, Hiroya comes out of it and wakes up to Jin, and everything is hunky dory. The story wasn’t really fleshed out well at all, and Jin’s hatred of Keita seemed to come out of nowhere.
Obviously the MVP story arc is the best, with the boys uncovering the corruption of the Vice-Chairman who wants to expel Keita to get at Kazuki so he would resign as Chairman, because the Vice-Chairman and his skeevy board member allies don’t want some punk kid in charge of the school.
Keita and Kazuki join the MVP contest, where more is revealed about Kazuki to Keita, and Keita, for whatever reason, starts to remember Kazuki as his childhood friend who made a promise they would go to school together. The two win the MVP contest, with Keita solving some of the riddles and helping the twin boys that hate him out when they are in danger. Even with the Vice-Chairman’s interference of hiring goons to take out Keita during the contest, Keita and Kazuki win, with a little help from their friends of course. Nakajima and the King specifically come out of the shadows to rough up the goons who try to taser them, and even Shunsuke runs over a couple of goons with his bike, unknowingly. Like I said, everything comes out perfectly for the heroes and the Vice-Chariman is fired and shamed for all his shady dealings.
Kazuki finally confesses to Keita, and during a meteor shower, they snuggle and share a kiss. It ends with all the other characters enjoying their own happiness and watching the meteor shower too. And also during that meteor shower, Hiyora wakes up from his coma to Jin, and they embrace, and Hiyora appreciate’s Jin’s long hair, which he grew out no doubt for him. It’s a feel good ending, and the two main boys get together. There’s kind of a hilarious epilogue in the morning where Keita is coming out of the bushes frazzled and running late to his classes, blaming Kazuki. Kazuki winks at him, and it’s up to the viewer to assume whether they did more than kiss the night before.
(they totally banged)
Okay we know you got some, Kazuki.
It was a cute anime story. I liked the 13 episode format, and there was no drawn out drama or stupid misunderstandings, which I’ve come to like in anime. I’ve seen enough anime with big seasons and multiple episodes that just draw stuff out and I just can’t get into that. It was a feel good ending, the anime boys are pretty to look at, and there’s some good humor throughout the plot. Nobody is really in danger and even the coma boyfriend of the evil school doctor comes out with a win.
I wished there was a little more development of Jin/Hiyora but other than that, I think they treated the reveal of Kazuki’s true identity to Keita in an appropriate way.
If you want to watch a cute, boys love anime with not a lot of uncomfortable explicit scenes, this is for you.
Disclaimer: I pulled some of these images from the web on Google. If any of them are yours I’d be happy to credit. Thanks!
H.K. Rowe 