This dark gritty Japanese BL is something I was not expecting. The story focuses on a Yakuza bodyguard assigned to kill his young boss. The premise sounds interesting but the execution was just weird. There were lot of problems with the show like violence, abuse, coercion and even forcing themselves sexually. Eventually it somewhere becomes. BL with some nonsense stuff. Thankfully the series was only 6 episodes of about 26-30 minutes each. Kataoka is a respected yakuza leader. His boss has grown old and frail, unable to manage the organization anymore. Leadership now falls to the boss's son, Keito. He assigns Odajima as Kataoka's new handler to keep him in check. Kataoka is impulsive and treats Odajima aslmost as a servant even forcing sex on him. But beneath the rough exterior, Kataoka occasionally reveals a gentler side. Odajima, on the other hand, is stoic and distant, keeping his emotions under tight control. What Kataoka doesn't know is that Odajima has a hidden agen...
An aspiring dancer named Ben shows up in Los Angeles and moves in with his two best friends Jason and Corey, the three of them looking to find love in the city of dreams while also seeking fulfillment in their careers. He is just coming out and desperate to find love. He meets fellow dancer Craig, with whom he starts practicing a musical piece. Little does Ben know that Craig has an outlook that's more in step with his than he realizes. Jason delivers humorless stand-up comedy routines while pursuing an industry bigwig in the hopes of making it in show business. H indulges in meaningless sex. Things change when he meets a big shot producer who could help him advance his career bu he blows that up as well. Finally we have Corey who airs his fear of sex by donning garish outfits and working as assistant to a former star, pretending to be a girl (out confused character of the film in my opinion). The three just navigate through the randomness of West Hollywood, moving from man to man, but still hoping to find love.
The so called humor of the film is situational and quite honestly, it is very awkward. There is no sense of background to either the characters or their relationship, there is little connection between scenes, everything is stereotyped to its greatest extent and most of the dialogue makes no sense. The trio talk to each other in a lot of scenes and clearly neither has any depth of life understanding to be giving each other any advice on career, life or love. The dance routine between Jason and Corey are boring. The humor of Corey dressed up as woman in garish outfits every single time working for an over the top fading celebrity are supposed to invoke laughter but they just fall flat and you can't help but fast forward those cringe scenes. The actors look ok but are just bad. Clearly, a lack of coherent screenplay and awful direction is to helping anyone here. In short, it’s garbage, and has far too little eye candy exploitation to make up for it. Avoid. (2.5/10)
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