What is this?

I read the manga when I was in high school and looking back, there were many problematic elements with everyone's relationship with Hatsumi. ** Spoilers Ahead **

Watching the live action I am baffled --
It's beautiful, artistic and several elements of filming created/heightened the mood.

That said, the storyline felt forced and the characters weren't developed enough for me to believe them. It is a movie so of course they had to condense the storyline and edit out a lot of scenes from the manga, but I was sad to see so much left out.

Ryoki's portrayal/complete 180° character change also threw me. Like who is this person?!?! We didn't meet any of his family or get a sense of who he was/the pressure that shaped him into a warped teen at all.

The major elements of the manga - the betrayal by Azuza, the brother who is not blood-related, Ryoki's father's fuckery didn't really land anywhere. It felt shallow and it was hard to feel any emotion for the situations or characters in the situation.

Outside of the above, the grandstanding big picture monologues about childhood and sexuality by Hatsumi and Ryoki were just...so forced and weird. It just felt like at a certain point they rewrote the entire story or tried to wrap it up in some way and to me it fell flat.

Overall I'm glad this was made, but I am left feeling disappointed.

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Great Cast / Beautiful Staging & Clothing

This series pulled me in with dramatic music and the decadence of attire of Lee Ra El. Her outfits, with the western symbols related to Eve were really, really well though out and added to her character. I loved the duality of love/hate with themes of forbidden love. Whoever dressed her deserves all the praise for this series.

The acting from Lee Ra El and Han So Ra carried a lot of the storyline for one. While at times the other characters felt one-dimensional, they both jumped off the screen and felt relatable, despite the over the top drama. The storyline itself is atypical with twists that are not too zany., which I really appreciated.

I highly recommend this series with the content warning that there is self harm, violence and some sex/steamy scenes.

Edit to add: Won't somebody think of the children!! I hope these kids are not traumatized.

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