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I’ve been promising this one for a while, so here's a thread:
Why you should watch Ossan’s Love, the hit liveaction Japanese gay romcom you never knew you needed!
Why you should watch Ossan’s Love, the hit liveaction Japanese gay romcom you never knew you needed!
Before we got into the story - what is this series? Ossan’s Love started out as a TV special in 2016, but it really got off the ground with a full 7-episode series in 2018. A sequel film to season 1, ‘Love or Dead’, released in Aug 2018, and a season just finished airing
Season one became a bit of a phenomenon in Japan - the final 2 episodes reached the number 1 Twitter trend in Japan, and the series’ gay pairings featured in mainstream magazines, media, and ads - reportedly the first time that had happened in Japan.
Basically the story is about Haruta Soichi, aged 33 and who works for a real estate division in Tokyo. He’s not doing so well at his job, his mum is threatening to kick him out, and he hasn’t had a girlfriend for years. He sets out to find love…
...and find love Haruta does, but not in the way he’d ever expect. It turns out Kurosawa, the division chief he’s worked with for 10 years, is in love with him - something Kurosawa planned to keep locked away inside his heart until by chance Haruta found out.
(if you're looking at this thread as I'm tweeting it, the clips are taking a while to upload, check back in a bit)
Haruta assumes everything is just a misunderstanding, but already halfway through ep 1 Kurosawa makes his intentions clear, even that he plans to divorce his wife to be with Haruta.
At the same time as all that’s happening, Haruta gets a new coworker in the form of Maki. Things end up with Maki moving into Haruta’s house, cue some cute domestic scenes
But as you might start guessing from the way Maki looks at Haruta all through ep 1, Kurosawa has a love rival… that’s right, there’s not 1 but 2 gay love confessions in just the first episode, this is the real deal!
Doesn’t take long before both Maki and Kurosawa’s love for Haruta is exposed to eachother and predictably sparks fly, leaving Haruta stuck in the middle unsure which if either of them he loves back
So that’s the setup, and it might already have got you interested, but plenty of good premises don’t work out. So what makes Ossan’s Love so brilliant? I’d break it down to:
1) Comedy
2) Pacing/progression
3) Great characters
4) LGBT+ rep
1) Comedy
2) Pacing/progression
3) Great characters
4) LGBT+ rep
1) Comedy. This series is just FUN to watch. A lot of that is down to the actor who plays Haruta (I LOVE him) who has so much energy and these perfect incredulous reactions to all the crazy stuff around him, and all the increasingly absurd situations the characters get into
2) Pacing/progression. Without a super high stakes plot, a romcom like this has the potential to get boring, but the pacing is really well judged, you’re almost never waiting for something to happen, and the cliffhangers keep you coming back for more
3) Characters. They’re all really lovable, even the minor ones - Haruta is really relatable and it’s easy to see why the other characters love him, you end up rooting for Kurosawa, and Maki is so good to Haruta (and the cutest one lol)
4) LGBT+ rep. Similar to many LGBT+ anime and manga you’re probably familiar with, Ossan’s Love prefers an approach that is show rather than tell - there’s no explicit reference anywhere in the series to terms like LGBT, gay, or sexual orientation. This line is closest it gets
There’s a lot to be said for Ossan’s Love’s approach - within the series gay/bi characters (ie all of the main cast) and gay love in itself feels very normalised, and treated as unremarkable, which was very refreshing to watch
That doesn’t mean the series doesn’t touch on a range of LGBT+ issues, though. The early eps have some subtle acknowledgements of Kurosawa’s struggle to express his true feelings, and his divorce from his wife reflects an experience of straight spouses married to gay/bi people
Then later on the in the season there’s a coming out scene of one of the characters to his parents, and same sex marriage gets included aswell.
Then in season 2 there’s an excellent plotline about a gay character who previously was in a heterosexual marriage and had a kid, I think this is a really important but underdiscussed topic to touch upon and the show did really well
I won’t spoil anything more of season 1 past the opening - aside from saying other love interests get thrown in the mix later on - but the story isn’t over quite yet.
While season 1 had a fairly complete ending, a sequel movie called ‘Love or Dead’ was was released in Japan in August 2019. The DVD is due to release in March, so we can see the conclusion of Haruta, Maki and Kurosawa’s story then!
Moving on to the 2nd season - this isn’t a sequel, but actually a kind of AU with Haruta and Kurosawa still being the same characters but a new location (an airport) and different characters. It’s kind of like a different from a visual novel, including new romantic options!
Overall I’d say the s2 isn’t as good as the first, due to being slower (it does pick up after ep 3 though) and not quite as tight a plot, also there’s more back and forth drama compared to s1, but still I think if you liked the first season you’ll get a lot out of the 2nd too.
As for spinoff material and merch, there’s various guidebooks, scriptbooks, a manga adaptation, and more. The first season has a boxset release and s2 and film have releases up for preorder
https://www.amazon.co.jp/s?k=%E3%81%8A%E3%81%A3%E3%81%95%E3%82%93%E3%81%9A%E3%83%A9%E3%83%96&i=dvd&ref=nb_sb_noss
https://www.amazon.co.jp/s?k=%E3%81%8A%E3%81%A3%E3%81%95%E3%82%93%E3%81%9A%E3%83%A9%E3%83%96&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss
https://www.amazon.co.jp/s?k=%E3%81%8A%E3%81%A3%E3%81%95%E3%82%93%E3%81%9A%E3%83%A9%E3%83%96&i=dvd&ref=nb_sb_noss
https://www.amazon.co.jp/s?k=%E3%81%8A%E3%81%A3%E3%81%95%E3%82%93%E3%81%9A%E3%83%A9%E3%83%96&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss
OK, so where to watch? Well… unless you buy the Japanese BD/DVDs, there’s no 100% legal way if you’re in the West. There’s fansubs, and Viu has a legal English subbed stream, you’ll need to use a VPN for the covered countries though https://www.viu.com/ott/sg/en-us/vod/221503/Ossans-Love
It’s also on Netflix, plus the 2016 special, I believe with English subs, though only in a few countries like Japan and Thailand, so again you’ll need to get around the region block https://www.netflix.com/jp-en/title/81011018
The recent specials are only available on Abema in raw only, my VPN doesn’t work with it but maybe you can find one that does: https://abema.tv/channels/abema-special/slots/AUBnYMqCxxqvLo
So anyway this has been quite a thread, but I hope I can encourage people to check out this hidden gem for the English speaking fandom. If you decide to watch it please tell me what you think!
Thank you to everyone who's read this thread so far! I guess if I can say one more thing, its that there's SO many excellent moments, scenes and plotlines I didn't touch on - I mainly mentioned ep 1 and a bit of ep 2, theres a LOT more I didn't get into to avoid spoiling too much
