Kieta Hatsukoi (2021)

I Just Want To Put Aoki In My Pocket

I'm just casually crying about the cutest LGBTQ+ Japanese show. They're really hitting all the nails.

The main guy is such a cutie relatable awkward cupcake. He's such a mood and him freaking out about all kinds of stuff and being super dramatic is just so funny. He's really that anxious little puppy that overthinks everything.

When both him and his best female friend thought they liked the same person, she reacted soo amazing. She literally was like LET'S GUSH ABOUT OUR MUTUAL CRUSH. She didn't even bat her eye when his crush was a guy.

His male best friend initially was like I didn't know you were like that and the moment he said that he was like at this moment he knew he fucked up. But baby Aoki was like yeah isn't it kind of weird that I like a guy, which had the male best friend like OMG NOOOO IT IS TOTALLY OKAY. He was just surprised but supported him immediately.

Besides, the love interest is the most precious thoughtful person ever.

Also, Aoki was getting tutored by like a University student that was like an aid to his class. They were getting along very well until the tutor saw Aoki holding hands with Ida, his boyfriend/love interest. So he then was like OMG AOKI MUST LIKE ME BECAUSE EVERYONE WHO IS IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH SOMEONE OF THE SAME SEX/GENDER MUST BE INTO EVERYONE OF THE SAME GENDER. He suddenly acted different and was saying all kinds of bullshit such as I'm not like that, which already had all of Aoki's friends and his boyfriend hella mad. But that tutor went even further when he saw Aoki giving directions to an older man to his hotel, for which the old man wanted to compensate him, which had the tutor like AOKI DON'T SELL YOUR BODY LIKE THAT. Precious awkward munchkin was like BITCH WTF and gave him crap for his retarded thinking which ultimately made the tutor realise how wrong he was thus he apologised.

I really like how supportive this show is and cancelling all those toxic stereotypes of queer people

The ending was just so full circle and darn cute. I just fucking loved this so much.

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Love story started from an eraser?

Not even a single kissing scene, but it will surely make you fall in love. Aoki was the cueeetesst in the world(I'm 100% confident about that) I can't even find any actors this much cute. This series helped me a lot to reduce my stress and made me smile whenever i watch aoki. Infact all the actors were really cute to the point that, we can't take our eyes off from them. There friendship, love, relationship everything was ON. And the songs, both the songs were amazing.( Don't forget to watch the snowman ost from utub) Ida and aoki had a really good chemistry and that makes this more fun to watch.

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I will rewatch it whenever I need to be reminded that Life is beautiful!

Kieta Hatsukoi is a slow burn no doubt but a soothing and heart warming one. I have rarely enjoyed any high school drama this much. The actors (including the supporting ones) were perfectly cast and they acted brilliantly. Special mention to the lead couple and their expressions.
Its a simple high school drama about 4 students finding love. Ida and Aoki's relationship starts with a misunderstanding but soon becomes too real for Aoki and Ida is unsure yet hesitant to let go. So begins the journey of exploration of emotions and one's self. All through this they respected eachother's boundary and took the yes and nos with patience. Meanwhile their ever supporting friends guided them and helped them in whatever way they could to realize eachother's true emotions. Even the friends never did anything cringe worthy. The support characters helped the plot move forward. The makers also touched upon the subject of prejudice that same-sex couples face and that was a surprise as generally in BLs they tend to avoid such serious issues. But it was shown in a lighter way and it made me very happy that they did. I am all for rosey romance but would like them to further the cause of the LGBTQ+ communities. The Osts were just perfect and I have listended to them non stop. The drama managed to transport me to my highschool days.
On the negatives, the series in the middle episodes felt a bit dragging. We were seeing the same confusions being played out for couple episodes in a row and it felt a tad bit drawn out for me. Either the makers could put more content or cut the series short.
All in all Kieta Hatsukoi is a feel good drama that shows respect, patience, perseverance and pure love. I will rewatch it whenever I need to be reminded that Life is beautiful with love and innocence in it!

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I really want to scream and tell everyone that this is my most favorite series of 2021 so far!!! I added the word ‘so far’ because I still have several “currently watching” series on my watchlist.

I don’t know where to start, but this series succeeded pulling my self out for any other series that I’ve been following at that time. I fell in love from the pilot till the season finale.

I really don’t mind about how stupid they are as a teenagers who fall in love at their very first time, weren’t we all? the naivety of all characters made this series easily to be fond of precisely lol

Well, let’s count the days till all of my series ended. Will it still be on my first spot?

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Um bl super confortável de assistir. Recomendo demaaais!!

É um bl simplesmente perfeito! A história e a relação entre o casal é extremamente fofa e confortável. N sei se isso é considerado spoiler mas, apesar de o casal não ter dado nenhum beijo, isso só faz provar que uma relação, para ser verdadeira, não é necessário que hajam beijos ou que tenha relações sexuais.
Eu adorei a temática de como é abordado o dorama, apesar de eu não ter lido o mangá, eu me senti como se estivesse literalmente vendo um mangá se transformando em live action.
Para finalizar a química dos principais e a atuação de todos os personagens são ótimas e puras. Vale muuuito a pena assistir.

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Petite douceur assumée

Vous savez ces dramas qui ont un pouvoir d'attraction inexplicable ? Kieta Hatsukoi était l'un de ceux-là pour moi.
Un casting parfait, une intrigue mignonne, une belle photographie et une bande son légère. À peine avait-il commencé que j'étais prise dans les filets de cette vraie douceur japonaise.

Aoki est adorable dans la peau du lycéen maladroit. Ses expressions sont extrapolées (ce qui m'empêche d'être pleinement satisfaite sur ce point), mais elles renforcent ses maladresses. Il a l'art et la manière de mettre les pieds dans le plat et toutes ces petites choses ne font que le rendre plus attachant. Bien sûr, on pourra bouder un manque de développement sur ses sentiments.
Ida est charmant et un personnage de peu de mots. Il est de ces personnes qui semble détaché de tout, alors qu'en réalité, lorsqu'il s'attache à quelqu'un, il donne tout ce qu'a et s'intéresse sincèrement à Aoki. Or, tout comme Aoki, on peut remarquer un manque de développement, mais encore une fois, j'ai plié le genoux face au duo.

Pourtant, au travers de ces personnages qui semblent clichés, le drama prend des directions différentes. Dont les doutes d'aimer une personne du même sexe. On découvre les interrogations et les craintes. Les personnages ne sont pas parfaits, mais c'est ce qui rend l'ensemble plus réaliste à mes yeux.
Ce n'est pas parfait, ce n'est pas non plus le BL japonais typique, il dégage autre chose. Le fait d'aborder ces thèmes plus sérieux alors qu'aux premiers abords on pourrait penser qu'il s'agit d'un nouveau BL japonais tout doux ne fait que renforcer l'affection pour Kieta Hatsukoi.

Bien que le drama se termine sur sa pointe de précipitation, il n'enlève en rien les bons moments que j'ai passé. Je ne pense pas me tromper en disant que c'est l'un des meilleurs BL de 2021.

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promising first half disappointing second

When I started watching this show it felt like a breath of fresh air and it didn't take much time to quickly fall in love with all of the characters and the warm, cozy feeling the show provided.

I LOVE Aoki's friendships with Hashimoto and Akkun and love how the show handled the love triangle, keeping it light-hearted and funny (+Hashimoto is such a good friend I love her so much she has to be one of the best female characters in a BL). Ida is such a sweetheart and I was earnestly rooting for the MLs to get together. His willingness to give Aoki a chance and his care for him makes for a heart-melting watch. Overall I appreciated the cute little story that it was with its extremely lovable 4 main characters.

However after the camping episode things started going downhill for me. The charm of the show seemed to have diminished and I found myself getting very bored. We saw less and less of the 2 best friends that I had grown to love and instead had episodic conflicts that failed to keep me interested. With Hashimoto and Akkun taking a backseat in favor of the main couple and other sideplots the ending to their romance wasn't satisfactory to me either as enough time wasn't given to them onscreen for me to have really felt the buildup and development of their relationship although initially I had gotten invested into them as a future side couple as well. With a cute and funny set-up Kieta Hatsukoi's ultimate downfall was its length. Though 10 episodes each being around 20 minutes long doesn't look lengthy at all it felt like it with how the story meandered on with a lack of focus and direction that the initial episodes had. It felt like we were going in circles with how situations would occur just to prevent the couple from getting together which made me grow tired of them as a whole. I think this would have worked much better for me if it was a movie consisting of eps 1-4 instead of a series. Also please note: the second half was not terrible and I understand why people seem to love this show (the high-school innocence of the friendships and romance is really very sweet) it was just not for me as I didn't find it to be anything special or entertaining/cute enough.

(Feel bad giving this 6.5 stars but considering I only genuinely liked and enjoyed 4/10 episodes it might just be generous)

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Started off strong, ended off weak

I was very looking forward to this drama series since October and since my school was still ongoing, I told myself to wait until December so I can watch it all together without having to look forward badly to the next episode. So the series finally ended and I watched it all at one go the past two days.

Story:
Like some comments mentioned, the series started off strongly but ended off weakly. The first few episodes were absolutely hilarious, witnessing all those misunderstandings everyone had and Aoki especially just being very cute and over-reacting to every situation.

Almost every episode left a sweet feeling in me after watching it because of the cute interactions between each character but episode 8 just didn't make it for me. The sudden appearance of the new teacher (who was played by one of the main characters in another BL if people noticed) and him being homophobic just didn't make sense at all and out of place, and only to not see him in the remaining episodes. It's as though the script writer just want to make it a 10-episode long drama and randomly fit a plot into the show, which like I said, is out of place.

Then came episodes 9 and 10, the scene cuts are way too short. You can suddenly go from one scene to another within a matter of seconds (not to mention the cut to black screen was pretty off-putting). Every scene just seems to only last a few seconds and then shift to another new scene. Overall I just felt like the last few episodes the script wasn't very well-written and well-filmed also. Not sure what went wrong there.

Acting/Cast:
All casts were very talented in trying to make this romance comedy film except I'm not sure if Ida's character is supposed to be this cold. I felt like he isn't expressing himself much and even he said he wanted to go out with Aoki, the expression doesn't change much and gives people the impression that he was unwilling to. That is the only flaw I feel in the acting, unless it is really a character he is playing.

Or I can see it another way that since he has not loved anyone before or been loved by others before, he does not know how to express his feelings hence everything new about romance to him appears to be foreign but he's trying to make sense of it.

Music:
Songs by both main characters. Absolutely delightful.

Rewatch?:
I mean I would rewatch because I really like to cuteness of both main characters and Japanese drama/movies in general as they tend to exaggerate the comedy part but I'm not very keen again to watch the last few episodes, especially seeing how it was so rushed and plot didn't really make much sense/not coherent rather.

I hope there's a Season 2 though which properly develops the romance between Aoki and Ida so that every Season 1 missing plot will make sense.

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Remained true to its cute nature

Kieta has always been a cute show, from episode 1. I mean, the whole show is based on a misunderstanding about an eraser with a name on it. Besides, this a 25 minute show, so there’s not much time to develop much. I personally think the show used well the runtime. But I wish they’d focus a bit less on some side plot stuff, like the running around the forest in the camp episode, and show more moments between Aoki and Ida. I don’t know if the homophobic teacher episode really fits well with the rest of Kieta. I don't dislike it, but I was surprised that they chose to tackle prejudice.

I like the 4 main characters and think they all have chemistry with each other. Aida e Hashimoto are great on their “sidekick” role but also have their own story going on. Aoki and Ida have great cute moments and explore well the shy/super expressive dynamics of the couple. All 4 actors are great on the roles, specially Shunsuke as Aoki. I also love the theme song by Snow Man.

I know some people were unhappy with the show ending without a kiss. I honestly was never expecting a kiss because that was not the vibe of the show. This is a Japanese show about first love in high school, plus the same sex aspect, so, when we got the whole holding hand incident on ep 8, I knew that we’d probably get the love confession and hug ending. I understand those people that were unhappy because they might have thought the show would maybe "push the limits". [Small Cherry Magic semi-spoiler] The issue didn’t bother we in other Japanese BL’s either, like Cherry Magic. But I think it’s more obvious that something is missing in that show, since it’s about people that are 30 and we know that thinks have changed by the end of the show.

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