Akuma Kun: The Chosen One and his canonical boyfriend investigate paranormal problems in a soggy, decaying neighborhood.

 

Akuma Kun (2023), on Netflix, drew my interest because of its excellent animation, all soggy, decaying opulence, and because of its blatant buddy bond between the two paranormal investigators.  Most of the anime we see on streaming services expect you to have known and loved the characters throughout your life, after buying the hundreds of manga, video games, comic strips, and tie-in toys and going to fan conventions to meet the stars of the live-action movies, but I'm going in fresh, with no research.  Episode 1.1: "Demons."

Scene 1:  A shabby office full of old furniture, books, papers, and weird bricabrac.  A big-headed boy named Mephisto complains that a lanky, gray-haired boy summoned him to deal with a toilet clog, and then ate all of his ramen! 

"It would have gotten soggy just sitting there, so I ate it," the boy responds, his nose stuck in a book. 

"If you want me to come over, why don't you call me on the telephone instead using a summoniing spell?"

"You come faster this way."

"But I'm half human, half demon, so I never cross over properly."  So Mephisto has been roped into becoming the Boy's servant, like a genie in a bottle?

 

The Boy is named Ichiro Umoregi, and titled Akuma Kun.  Akuma is translated "Demon," but it refers to any type of supernatural being, and Kun is a diminuitive used for close friends and little boys, so "Little Demon."  He is actually an adult -- everyone in this anime is drawn as a child.  He is voiced by Yuki Kaji, top photo in Japanese, Michael Johnston, left, in English, and Aidan Vallejo, below, in Spanish.  Both Michael and Aidan are gay.

Scene 2: Night.  A young college student walks down a dark, deserted street.  Suddenly a shadowy monster with glowing red eyes attacks!

Cut to a young woman named Hina walking toward the Millenarianism Research Institute.  So a cult?  Up a flight of wooden stairs to a courtyard with scary, ornate doors beyond.   She enters a drawing room cluttered with creepy skeletons and skull candleholders. Mephisto enters from the kitchen, exclaims "We have a client!  We can pay the rent!", and changes into a purple suit with a top hat and magician's cane. 

So they live together?  Then why does the Boy need to summon Mephisto?

Hina's case:  Two of her college classmates died two nights ago, at exactly 2:23 am.  And she discovered that three other people in the Kamichoufu Sector also died at the same moment.  Also, she's been plagued by nightmares.

Scene 3: They arrive at Hina's house to conduct some research.  The Boy immediately goes to her bedroom, angering her mother: "You can't just barge into a lady's room!  It's rude!"  

"Is this how your partner usually behaves?" Hina asks.

"He is a once-in-10,000 years genius, but he's sort of lacking in social skills." I'd put him on the autism spectrum.  The English, French, and Spanish voice actors speak in a monotone.

Mom recovers from her shock and brings them tea, but the Boy demands hotcakes ( hottokēki), not pancakes (pankēki).  He needs the sugar to get his brain cells active.  "Ok...um...I'll make you some hotcakes, I guess."  Ok, a little research.  Hotcakes are thicker than Western pancakes, with a custard-like texture.

Scene 4: The Boy rates the hotcakes the 18th best that he's had.    

Mom is a professor of European history.  The Boy has read her book, Lives and Sins of Kings, and found her interpretation of the Medieval monarchy "banal."  Way to insult your hostess, kid.

Hina tells them that the murdered people were all college students, but some went to other universities, and one had just graduated.

While Mephisto tries to discuss payment with Hina, the Boy looks under the bed  and sees a red-eyed monster.  No one else can see it.  He draws a mysterious Eye in the Pyramid on a scrap of paper and tells her to keep it close.  They'll be back tomorrow.

Scene 5: That night, while Hina is asleep, a red-eyed monster sneaks out from under the bed, but she holds up the Eye, and it vanishes.

Scene 6: Kamichoufou Odeon Cinema, a run-down theater near the Boy's office.  Hina tells him about the monster.  He suggests that someone is trying to keep them from investigating the case.

When he pinppoints the locations of the deaths on a map, it creates a pentagram.  So someone is trying to protect the person or thing in the center.  Hina recognizes the building: it's the home of her college friend Ichika. 

As they approach the house, Hina reveals that her friend didn't know any of the murder victims, except as faces in the cafeteria.  She belonged to a club with a "seedy" reputation. And she hasn't come to class in weeks.

The Boy suddenly decides not to go in. "Come by the Research Institute tomorrow."

That night the red-eyed monster appears again, but Hina has laminated the Eye and tied it to her wrist, so it can't attack. She doesn't even wake up.

More after the break

"This Love Doesn't Have Long Beans." But does it have any d*cks? Thai BL with cooking and evil schemes. Plus Japanese and Himalayan dudes

Link to the n*de dudes

I 'm seeing more and more Thai BL series on Netflix.   I like the universe where everybody is gay or bi, and the settings are  sometimes interesting, but the multisyllabic names make research difficult. Try typing "Sailub Hemmawich Kwanamphaiphan" and "gay" into your search engine. And when you do, they never have n*de photos available; I have to make do with random n*de dudes.  I think this one is Japanese, not Thai.  But who can resist a show called This Love Doesn't have Long Beans?

I checked: Long beans, fak yao, are legumes, denser and less juicy than Western green beans, and they grow up to three feet long.  No proverb that I could find.  

Scene 1:  Influencer Prawan is reviewing the No Long Beans Basil House. He only reviews restaurants that specialize in basil stir fry, pad krapao.  This one is unique because they don't include long beans, a traditional ingredient in the dish.  

He praises the atmosphere, the plating, and the food, loudly, annoying the other customers, until Chef Oab, the "Hellfire Chef," asks him to leave.  Then he hates everything, insults Chef Oab, and tries to fight him.  Waiters hold him back.

"You think because you're a great chef, and incredibly handsome, that you can push people around! Well, I'll get even.  I'll leave a bad review, and none of my 13 followers will come to your restaurant."

Scene 2: Shirtless musclemen posing for the camera.  Influencer Prawan bursts in late, and then won't take off his shirt.  "It's a commercial for a weight loss clinic.  We asked for a model with a six pack." "Well..um...I can act."  The director kicks him out.

Next he gets a text from the electric company: he has to pay his bill today, or they're cutting off his power.  But he only has 99 baht (about $3.00) in his bank account.   What can he do?

How about ask his agent for a loan?  No way -- he got Prawan that modeling job, and he was kicked off the set for not being in shape.  "You promised that you'd be in model shape by the beginning of the year!  

Prawan begs for another chance.  His influencer career isn't working out -- no one is paying him to review restaurants.  Maybe if you expanded beyond pad krapao?   

"Just get me one more job."  

"No, you're hopeless."

Scene 3: Back home, Prawan is inundated by bills from creditors and disconnect notices. He goes to his friend JJ's house and announces that he's staying there.

"Only for one night.  After that, you go home."

"But my power's been cut off.  I can't go home."

"I've paid your electric bill."

"Oh...well, they've turned off the water, too..." Har-har.

Scene 3: Chef Oab reviewing a commercial for his restaurant.  First, as one of the celebrity judges on Kitchen Fire Thailand (logo in English), he screams that the pork is undercooked, and tastes awful. Cut to praising how he selects the ingredients for the world's best pad krapao.  Most important: no long beans. Shouldn't that be a matter of taste?  

He's not going to use the commercial.

"But why?  We can make any changes you want."

"Because I'm closing the restaurant.  I've lost my passion."  

"Is it because of your ex girlfriend?"   Cut to him and his girlfriend hugging, gazing at each other, tasting food, and opening their restaurant, with "no long beans" because she is allergic to them.  

"Yes, and also I need money.  I'll sell to the first person who meets my offer."

More after the break

Confessions of a Mask

When I started grad school in Bloomington, Indiana, I didn't have much trouble finding gay books.  There was no gay section at the campus bookstore or the White Rabbit bookstore downtown, but you could just scan the fiction shelves for titles that were dark and sinister, about secrets and lies and despair: The Flowers of Evil, A Thirsty Evil, The Thief's Journal, The Color of Darkness, The Immoralist, City of Night, The Young and Evil.

So when I saw Yukio Mishima's Confessions of a Mask (1949) on the shelf, I knew that it was gay-themed.

It's about Kochan, a Japanese schoolboy in the 1930s who is tormented by same-sex desire.

He gazes lustfully at a night-soil carrier (a man whose job it is to carry human excrement) and at pictures of dead soldiers, knights, and Christian martyrs, especially St. Sebastian who was pierced by arrows (traditionally a subject of gay painters; Franz Kafka also posed).  He fantasizes about killing beautiful young men, enjoying the image of their beautiful faces bruised and bloodied, their muscular bodies seeped in blood.  Homoerotic desire is inextricably linked to the desire for filth, and to the desire to destroy.

Through his childhood and adolescence, Kochan never falters in his belief that he is wrong, deviant, evil, a monster masquerading as human.  He watches his schoolmates, especially a muscular boy named Omi who writes his name in urine on the snow.

He tries to suppress his urges for excrement, men, and death, even going as far as to have sex with a woman, but he realizes that he can never truly love anyone.  His desires are not only deviant but impossible; male beauty can only appear amid excrement;  a man cannot love a man without killing him.

Wow.

A rather depressing view of my future

Mishima was gay himself, and led a tortured life, obsessed with bodybuilders and death. He felt humiliated by the Japanese defeat in World War II, and in 1970 attempted to incite a coup d'etat to restore the power of the emperor.  When that didn't work, he committed ritual suicide.

"RobiHachi": Gay-Subtext Buddies on a Planet of Musclemen, Chased by a Gay Stereotype

 RobiHachi, a 2019 anime series on Hulu:down-on-his-luck Robi tries to escape bill collector Hachi by stowing away on a spaceship headed for the planet Iskander, but Hachi follows him on board.  Now "this odd couple will make the trek together," No doubt with a romance developing, as evident in the "shipping" of the two names.

It looks like two boys,but Hachi is rather androgynous, so they could be a girl.  I checked out the voice artists: Kazuya Nakai (Robby) is male, but I can't tell the gender of Keisuke Komoto (Hachi), left.   Plus their biography uses "they/them" pronouns.  

The website Behind the Voice Actors has photos of characters they've voiced.  Darn!  Keisuke Komoto does both boy and girl voices.  Another dead end.

I should have checked the IMDB photos from the series first.  Both boys.  This one is from the episode "Que-eel-ee Surprise."  What the heck does that mean?  I'm reviewing it anyway.

Scene 1: Robi (redhead) and Hachi (pink hair) are piloting the space ship alone, except for a white-headed Hello-Kitty-type pet.  I thought it was a passenger ship?  They plan to stop on Hamama II, a planet known for its eels, just in time for its Great Eel Festival. (They're extinct back on Earth).

Scene 2: They land amid a herd of oxen supervised by musclemen in jockstraps.  "Awesome! You're so buffed! Robi exclaims.  "There's no time for you to admire him!" the Hello-Kitty yells.  "Ask where the Festival is."  Wait -- Robi is admiring male beauty.  Is he canonically gay?

Whoops, the festival is starting now!  The musclemen mount their oxen and gallop off.  Robi and Hachi follow.  

Suddenly a giant eel bursts from the ocean and swallows the oxen -- and chases Robi and Hachi.  The musclemen quickly subdue it.  Another giant eel for the festival!

Scene 3: A festival full of musclemen lassoing giant eels and turning them into sushi.  A little girl asks if Robi and Hachi need a guide.  "Not you," Robi says.  "If you were a young lady, then..."  Wait -- is he canonically straight? Maybe he just thinks that she's too young to be qualified as a guide.  She gives them a sob story, and they hire her.

Scene 4: Mr. Yang, the Big Bad who is chasing Robi, ostensibly to collect a debt,  lands on the planet. He's wearing nail polish and multiple rings.  A stereotypic feminine villain?  His henchmen note that the Eel Festival is going on. A perfect opportuinty to enhance his virility before hunting down Robi.  In English "virility" refers only to sexual prowess.  The Japanese word must refer to strength of all sorts, unless Yang plans on having sex with Robi.  

Scene 5:  Various aliens and humans in swimsuits eating grilled giant eel. Why swimsuits?  I'm going into beefcake overload.  Robi and Hachi, also in swimsuits, eat several skewers, even though Hello-Kitty advises that they're very expensive.  Their guide gives them a rundown of the day's events.

Meanwhile, the henchman bring Mr. Yang an eel bone.  When he eats it, he's overwhelmed with energy -- and shows a big bulge in his swimsuit!  

They stop for a parade, with a giant paper-mache eel carried by innumerable muscle men -- and Robi and Hachi!  Mr. Yang doesn't notice them.  He yells "Robi, I'm going to catch you, wherever you are!"

Scene 6: The Unazuki Hotel, popular among off-world tourists. Robi and Hachi get separate rooms -- not canonically gay. Meanwhile, Mr. Yang is prancing around, swishy hand on hip, wondering where Robi went. He and his henchmen get rooms at the Unazuki, too.  He continues to gorge on eel, over-fortifying his virility.  I think they really mean sexual potency.  The gay stereotype is hot for Robi!

More after the break

"Bullet Train": 11 assassins, Logan Lerman, and queerbaiting on the train from Tokyo to Kyoto. With some nude dudes

Link to the nude dudes

Friday's Movie Night movie was Bullet Train (2022), starring Brad Pitt as a professional assassin assigned to do an "easy" job, grab a briefcase full of money, on the bullet train that travels the 440 km (220 miles) from Tokyo to Kyoto in two hours. He doesn't realize that the train is crowded with other assassins, professional and amateur.

1. The Father, Andrew Koiji, wants revenge on The Prince, a gang lord who had his son thrown off a building.  

2. The Prince is also on the train, but he doesn't recognize her. She forces him to retrieve the money and load it with explosives, to assassinate her estranged father, #6, below.

3.-4. Tangerine and Lemon, Andrew Taylor-Johnson and Brian Tyree Henry, a queerbait couple.  After nearly two hours of the two bickering, being affectionate, and discussing their life together, director David Leitch loses his nerve and makes them brothers.

They have rescued...

5. The Son, Logan Lerman, top photo, from kidnappers, and also retrieved the ransom money that Brad Pitt is supposed to steal.    But the Son is killed, I forget by whom, so....

6. The Son's father, Russian crime lord The White Death, Michael Shannon, shows up to kill Tangerine and Lemon and whoever else he thinks flubbed the job. 

More assassins after the break

Cartoon Muscle: Not Just Superheroes in Spandex

When I was a kid, you could occasionally see shirtless boys or men in Saturday morning cartoons, but it was rare, primarily on jungle or prehistoric adventure series like The Herculoids.   Mostly you had to make do with an open shirt or a spandex superhero uniform, and of course Saturday morning live-action series.

Fred from Scooby-Doo seemed to have a nice physique, but not once in 10,000 episodes did he ever take his shirt off.

Times have changed. In Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated (2010-2013), he flexes at poolside.

The Anime Boys with Their Shirts Off blog displays the shirtless boys and men appearing in a huge number of animated tv series, everything from adventure to comedy, and even some toddler tv.  Did you ever want to see Dora the Explorer's brother Diego with his shirt off?  Or Bill from Curious George?

There's a lot of Japanese anime, like The Legend of Korra and The Daily Lives of High School Boys),  but also a lot of Western cartoons, everything from Phineas and Ferb to Johnny Test.




There are even a few oldies, like these golden-haired preppy types (from Beverly Hills Teens and Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, respectively).

Apparently animators are no longer worried about kids being traumatized for life by the sight of a torso or two (like these from Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego).

See also: Saturday Morning Muscle

Manga: Gay Japanese Comics

When I visited Japan, I saw manga everywhere: thick, heavy books of sequential art, similar to Western comic books but with a different history, a distinctive style, and a much larger audience.  Everybody was reading manga, not just fanboys, and they came in many different genres, from comedy to drama to the hardest of hard-core porn.

In the absence of Western hysteria concerning gay people, same-sex desire and relationships are commonly portrayed as unremarkable facts of life, even in manga aimed at juveniles.

Yaoi are manga involving romances between teenage boys, both drawn as ultra-feminine and girlish, aimed at an audience of teenage girls.  They seem to be the Japanese equivalent of Western teen idols, who are commonly presented as androgynous.

(Yuri are the female equivalent, involving romances between teenage girls.)

If you prefer more masculine men, try bara, manga involving hirsute man-mountains in love.

Here are some of the more popular (but non-pornographic) gay-themed manga available in English translation.  Many have also been turned into anime (Japanese cartoons).

But be careful...they are convoluted, multi-volume, so once you start, you'll have to read a dozen or more to get the whole story.

1. Close the Last Door! Nagai is a salaryman who is secretly in love with his coworker, Saito, who is about to marry a woman.....

2.Silver Diamond. High school student Sawa teams up with the intergalactic outlaw Chigusa, to try to save Chigusa's planet from evil plant creatures.

3. Punch Up. Sophisticated young architect Motoharu has lost his pet cat.  Rough, husky factory worker Kouta has found it.  The two mistrust each other at first, but....

4. Three Wolves Mountain. Kaya runs a cafe in a small, isolated town.  One night he meets two werewolf brothers (fox spirits in the original Japanese).  He falls in love with the younger brother, but the full moon is coming....

5. Antique Bakery. Famous baker Ono is accustomed to getting any guy he wants, using both his superlative physique and his baking skills.  But his boss, Tachibana, seems oblivious.  Until....

6. One Thousand and One Nights.  The sultan keeps marrying women and killing them, and Sehara's sister Shahrazad is next in line!  He is willing to do anything to save her, including....

7. Loveless. Ritsuka is a "catboy," who will lose his cat-like qualities when he loses his virginity.  He and an older man named Soubi team up to find his brother's killer, and encounter a mysterious organization called The Seventh Moon....

8. Hetalia Axis Powers. World War II is recreated by characters named after the countries involved: Italy, Germany, Japan, America, England, France.  Except now they can form hidden alliances and fall in love...

9. Crimson Spell. Prince Vaid suffers under a curse: he turns into a demon every night!  He seeks out the assistance of the powerful sorcerer Halvi, who is afraid to tell him about the one act that can break the curse....

10. G-Defend. Ishikawa is an instructor for the Japanese Security and Anti-Terrorist Squad. His assistant, Iwase, has a secret crush on him....

See also:  Yokai: Gay Goblins of Japan.

"Dive!!": Japanese Anime Featuring Bulges, Biceps, and Longing Gazes

 Most Japanese anime series devote about 70% of the run time to close-ups of women's breasts, but Dive!! (with two exclamation points) is somewhat different: instead of boobs, we see biceps, bulges, pecs, and abs filling the screen.  Most of the characters are in high school, but we'll assume that they are of legal age, so it's ok to look, and the camera certainly expects us to.   I reviewed the first episode. 

Scene 1:  A little boy, Tomoki, follows his dog to a swimming pool, and is mesmerized by the diving boards, and by a boy getting ready to dive (long full-body shot).  A Damascus Road moment -- he's just discovered the meaning of life!  Diving or cute boys?  Another lingering full body shot as the boy notices Tomoki's interest, approaches, and asks, "Want to jump?"  Did you say "jump" or "kiss"?

Tomoki narrates: "Since that day I have been addicted to the fear and excitement of this world of wind and water." And cute boys.

Scene 2:  A huge auditorium.  The teenage Tomoki gazes in ecstasy as Yoichi, the boy at the pool that day bulked and bulged up,  approaches the board and executes a dive. He wins first place, and gets a full body shot (I'm going to stop pointing these out.  They happen constantly.)  "You were awesome!" Tomoki exclaims.  Yoichi counters: "You can soar, too!"  They gaze into each other's eyes.

Scene 3: At school, Tomoki's classmates criticize him for his diving obsession. "But you see so many bulges!"  (Just kidding.)  A hot girl approaches.  Now they understand why he dives: to get girls.  When I was in school, everyone assumed that the only reason a boy did anything, from joining a club to choosing a college, was to meet or impress girls.

Scene 4: Tomoki and the Girl walking.  While she blathers on about pancake toppings, he reflects: people always ask if diving is scary.  But it's not: the real problem is the pain.  I've jumped off the high dive. There's a little sting as you hit the water.  Maybe when you dive, you're going faster, so it hurts more.

They reach the pool.  The Girl want to watch him dive, but "You can't.  No spectators.  Um...look, there's Yoichi! Bye!"  He abandons her for the cute boy.  

Scene 5: Yoichi displaying his bulge...um, I mean stretching.  The obviously smitten Tomoki approaches to watch him dive. 

 Coach: "Growl, growl, your shoulders were off."

Now it's Tomoki's turn.  He hesitates; the other divers tell him to hurry up.  Hey, one of them flashed a limp wrist!  Does that mean the same thing in Japan as it does in America?  He does a backwards double-somersault.  

Coach: "Growl, growl, your toes were off."

Scene 6: The divers in the hot tub, complaining about the coach: he expect us to become Olympic athletes.  This is supposed to be fun. They also criticize Tomoki for hesitating on the board: it throws all of the divers off.  

Scene 7: As we look at various diver bulges, the narrator plot dumps: Mizuki Diving Club was founded six years ago by Chairman Mizuki, head of the biggest sports company in Japan, to promote Japanese divers.  If they don't start producing results -- Olympic-ready athletes -- they will be closed.  So far Yoichi is their only hope: both of his parents were famous divers, so he grew up on the boards. The camera lingers on his body.

Scene 8: Flashback to Tomoki's first day of diving instruction.  As the kids practice on the low dive, he gazes awestricken up at Yoichi on the high dive.  "He is so cool!"

Scene 9: It's raining, but the young Tomoki goes to the pool anyway: "I thought there would still be practice.  I want to learn to go on the high dive like everyone else."  Yoichi encourages him to try.  He bounces and splats on the water: 

Yoichi: "Next time keep your eyes open."  Whoops, he goes in too slowly, and splats again. A third try, and he makes it!  Yoichi helps him out of the pool, grinning.

Tomoki narrates: "That was the only time Yoichi taught me something."

Scene 10: The team is gossipping about "A scandal!  Adultery!"  One of the boys saw Coach Fujitani talking to a young woman; obviously his girlfriend! And then he bailed on practice.  "No way!  Coach would never abandon us like that! She's obviously from corporate, here to shut us down."

Meanwhile, Yoichi accuses Tomoki of having a girlfriend.  "It's not like that!" he exclaims, but Yoichi is already walking away.  Tomoki watches him sadly. "Oh, no, this is the worst!" he thinks. Why is he upset that Yoichi thinks he's dating a girl?  Because now Yoichi will never ask him out? 

Scene 11:  A forlorn Tomoki goes home.  Younger brother Hiro:  "The Girl is upset because you didn't return her texts."  Tell her to get lost!  "Leave me alone!  I'm having boyfriend problems!"  

Scene 12: Tomoki walking his dog, being forlorn: "The Girl said that she was in love with me, and wanted to be my girlfriend, and I agreed!  Why did I do it?  Maybe I wanted to brag to my friends, or keep from hurting her feelings?  Or maybe I was scared of what rejecting a girl might mean."  The Girl keeps texting him, and he keeps ignoring her.

Scene 13: After school.  Tomoki says goodbye to his classmates, sees the Girl, and...runs to the pool.  Suddenly one of his teammates points out that the young woman from corporate is here to shut them down!

The bulges line up for her announcement: she's the new coach, determined to take them to the Tokyo Olympics.  The end.

Beefcake: Lots of physiques, bulges everywhere. In later episodes, we get butt shots, too.  Of course they have to dress in swimsuits to dive, but the camera loves lingering,   

Is Tomoki Gay:  It looks canonical, but to be sure, I fast-forwarded through some other episodes.

In Episode 3, Tomoki and the Girl go on a picnic.  He sees other couples kissing, and asks: "Do you ever feel like you're trapped?  Penned in a small space, and you'll be stuck there for the rest of your life?"  Sure, that was my childhood and adolescence, trapped by the "all boys like girls" mythos.

In Episode 6, the Girl has dumped Tomoki for his brother.  He is angry and betrayed, but brother points out that he doesn't know her birthday, her favorite color, or anything else about her.  "And have you ever kissed?"

But there is no same-sex kiss, either, just some longing looks and touched hands.  If he is canonically gay, it is all in conversations.

The original novel by Eto Mori (2000-2002) is dubbed "homoerotic" by wikipedia, but no further details are given.  The 2008 movie adaption, as described on Asianwiki, seems to concentrate on the "beautiful coach" and reduce the homoerotic to subtext. 

Thermae Romae Novae: An Anime about Ancient Roman Bath Houses

Thermae Romae Novae: "The New Roman Baths," an anime based on a manga about bath houses.  And not the sexual kind, the ancient Roman/modern Japanese bath houses that you use when your apartment doesn't have a shower.  Sounds like a very limited premise, but there will doubtless be lots of scenes of semi-naked hunks.

Scene 1: Montage of people in ancient Rome getting hot and sweaty: a gladiator, a chariot racer, some guys at a feast.  A boy named Lucius (David Wald), running to bring lunch to his grandfather, is accosted by bullies.  The leader, Titus, throws the lunchbag over the bridge -- lost forever!  It's not that big a deal -- you're obviously not poor, and they had fast food stands in ancient Rome. Just buy him a new lunch.

Scene 2:  Sobbing, Lucius approaches Grandpa, an architect working on a new construcgtion project.  Grandpa consoles him, but Apollodorus, the manager, yells at him for being a wimp.  He runs away -- past a fast food place, where his teenage friend Marcus offers him a kebab.  

Scene 3:  Lucius and Marcus eating.  They discuss the new tower, built to commemorate Emperor Trajan's victory in the Dacian Wars (105=106 AD).   Marcus helped build it; he wants to be a stonemason when he grows up.  Lucius doesn't know what he wants to do. (Does he have a choice?  Don't Roman boys follow their fathers' careers).

Scene 4:  After Marcus' extremely muscular father drags him back to work, Lucius walks past the bath house, and flashes back to his own extremely muscular father telling him that thermae are not just places to bathe: "They're a celebration of our way of life."  I could say the same thing about gay bathhouses.  We zoom across the extremely muscular patrons, all men; two look like they're going to wrestle or have sex.

Next, Lucius flashes back to hearing about his father's death in a scaffolding accident.

Scene 5:  Lucius in his room, reading a scroll.  Grandpa announces that he's going to take a bath, and forces a reluctant Lucius to go with him.  Whoa, beefcake fest! A few butts, no penises.   

Grandpa explains the procedure: first a soak in the hot caldarium, then the cold frigidarium, then a body scrub and back to the caldarium.  Uh-oh, while Grandpa is off getting scrubbed, the bullies attack.  Lucius ducks under water to escape them, and comes up in a bath house in modern day Japan!  I hope there's a Latin scholar around.  

He screams, ducks under water again, and is back home, disoriented and confused.  "What just happened?"  

Grandpa is rhapsodizing about the bath house, "an essential part of our culture," where men go to "share moments together in hot water" (tell me more, tell me more, did you get very far?)   Flashback to his father going even farther: "We have the duty to build the future of Rome."  Ok, this is getting too hyperbolic.  It's just a bath house, not a temple.

After Grandpa leaves, the bullies return.  Titus insults the thermae.  This makes Lucius angry.  They fight.  The bully pounds him, until the other men pull him off.

Scene 6: Night.  Lucius and Grandpa stop by the fast-food stand for a beverage.  Lucius says that he wants to become a thermae architect.  Grandpa makes him promise to make baths "that wash away anger."  

Scene 7: Years later, the adult Lucius (Hiroshi Abe in the 2012 movie) is living in Athens.  He goes home to visit his mom and grandma.  I'm glad he's not going to be a ten-year old through the series.  He wants to take a bath before dinner, so it's off to the old bath house of his childhood, where he runs into his former bully, the extremely muscular adult Titus.  They catch up: Titus is a butcher with a young son, and Lucius, of course, is a thermae architect.  

When Titus tells him that he is married with children, Lucius gets a strange wistful look.  Is he interested in Titus, or is he upset because he doesn't have a girlfriend?  

Postscript: A documentary about the manga artist, Mari Yamakazi, conducting research on Japan's bath house culture.  First up: the Kusatsu Onsen hot springs.  The water is so hot that it has to be cooled down through a splashing-technique called yumomi, which she will incorporate into her stories.

Beefcake:  Everywhere, in the bath or out.  Except everyone has weird hashtag marks on their cheeks.  At first I thought they were dirt smudges, but they never go away.

Other Sights:  Lots of exteriors of ancient Rome.

Time Travel:  Barely mentioned.  One would expect it to be an ongoing theme.

Gay Characters:  No one except Titus expresses any same-sex interest, or any heterosexual interest. In the manga series, Lucius gets girlfriends in both ancient Rome and modern-day Japan, so maybe that will be happening in future episodes.

My Grade: B. 

"Kotaro Lives Alone": A 4-Year Old Boy who Talks Like a Samurai and Lives...Alone

 

In Kotaro Lives Alone (2022), a 4-year old boy moves into the apartment next to struggling manga artist Karino (Yokoyama Yu in the live-action version).  By himself.  When questioned, he states that he is an adult, perfectly capable of managing on his own.  He speaks in the flowery language of a medieval Japanese warlord.  His t-shirt says "God" in English.  

I'm intrigued.  Is he the reincarnation of a samurai?  Is he God?

Karino has no time for this weird boy who acts like an adult, but it's sort of his duty to make sure that he doesn't get into trouble, so he starts tagging along, to the bath house and the grocery store, letting Kotaro watch tv on his set, helping him bandage his scrapes.  

At the end of the first episode, Tamaro, who looks like a gangster or a pimp, bursts in, and we think that we will get some answers -- maybe Kotaro is on the run from the Yakuza? But it turns out that Kotaro doesn't know him.  He's desperate to befriend the boy because he has lost custody of his own son.

This turns out to be a problem.  When Karino hangs out with the boy, everyone assumes that they are father and son, but when Tamano does, everyone assumes that he is a pedophile attempting to molest him.  He's constantly being questioned by security guards and police officers.

Another neighbor, Ms. Mizuki, works as a pleasure girl: men at a night club pay to hang out with her.  She wants to mother Kotaro.

That's three people helping Kotaro, and through helping him learning to grow, overcome their problems, and live their best lives.  

The explanations comes slowly, and they turn out to be mundane: Kotaro is not God or a reincarnated samurai.  He's just a regular kid, running away from an abusive father, living on his dead mother's life insurance money.  

But by that time, you're hooked on the stories.

Beefcake: Karino goes to the bath house a lot.

Heterosexism:  In the first scene, Karino is dumped by his girlfriend. After that, not much hetero-romance.  One expects Karino and Mizuki to get together and adopt Kotaro, but it doesn't seem to be happening.

Kotaro "selects" Mizuki at the pleasure club, so he may have a crush on her.  Or maybe he's not aware of what her job entails, and he wants to hang out with a mother figure.

Gay Characters: No one explicit, but Tamano gives Kotaro the standard "Closed-minded people always hate someone who's different" speech.  

My Grade: B

The Top 6 Beefcake Stars of "Power Rangers Beast Morphers"

The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers premiered on the Fox Kids Network in August 1993, when I was living in West Hollywood and a big fan of some of the classic kids' shows like Tiny Toon Adventures, Rugrats, Doug, and Rocko's Modern Life.  So I watched.  For about 10 seconds.

Teenagers from a contemporary American high school get assignments from a....a nightmarish disembodied head with bulbous lips floating in a vat of opaque jelly.  They turn into costumed superheroes -- action sequences actually borrowed from an earlier Japanese series -- and the superheroes in turn merge into mechanical creations.  They fight a number of ridiculous monsters sent to destroy the world by the over-the-top Rita Repulsa.

Ridiculous premise, disturbing, disgusting images -- sorry, I can't get over the horror of the opaque-jelly vat guy.  Click.

Who knew that kids would like it?  That there would be years of spin-offs and sequels?

The latest, Power Ranger Beef Morphers, which has just premiered on Nickelodeon, is about...um....

I am copying the premise directly from wikipedia.  I can't understand a word of it:

Set sometime in the future, a secret agency in the city of Coral Harbor known as Grid Battleforce combines a newly-discovered substance called "Morph-X" with animal DNA to create a new team of Power Rangers known as the Beast Morphers. The Beast Morpher Rangers must defend the Morphin Grid from Evox, an evil sentient computer virus that creates evil avatar clones of original Beast Morphers candidates Blaze and Roxy, who have been rendered comatose as a result. When the three of them are transported to the Cyber Dimension, Evox, Cybervillain Blaze, and Cybervillain Roxy gain its de facto ruler Scrozzle as an ally as he helps them in their plan to return Evox to Earth

Holy cow.  I just want to know if there are any cute guys in the cast.

1. Rorie D. Travis stars as Devon Daniels.  I couldn't find any beefcake photos, but this one of him and a buddy is evocative.  I wonder if he's gay.

2. Jasmeet Baduwalla,aka Jazz, as the Blue Power Ranger (top photo).  At least he has some abs.

3. Abraham Rodriguez as Nate Silva.  Cute, but I could use some biceps.

4. Colby Strong as Blaze, the one who is comatose while his cybervillain double tries to take over Scrozzle or something.  Cute, but haven't any of these guys heard of a Nautilus machine?

5.  Cosme Flores as Ben Burke.  It's nice to see plus-sized actors being cast in action-adventure roles, but I'm still holding out for someone who can bench press his body weight.

6.  Reid McGowan as Steel.  Finally, some muscles!

Now,  is a shirtless shot too much to ask for?

Walk, Don't Run: Cary Grant's Last Gay Pickup

Walk, Don't Run (1966) is set during the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, where there is a severe shortage of hotel rooms.  Important businessman Sir William Rutland (bisexual actor Cary Grant) arrives with nothing available, so he answers a "roommate wanted" ad.  The only problem: the apartment is owned by a woman, Christine Easton (Samantha Eggar).

He assures her that he has no amorous intentions -- he has a wife back in England -- but then he spends the next day bragging about the "beautiful woman" he's living with, hoping that someone gets the wrong idea.

Having demonstrated that he is heterosexual, sort of, Rutland goes cruising.  He spies American architect and Olympic competitor Steve Davis (Jim Hutton), and rather obviously tries to pick him up.  After some seductive conversations, he drags Steve into a bathhouse, apparently hoping for a glimpse of his goods.  The American complains about women scrubbing his body -- women, gross!  -- before jumping nude into the bath.

Thus softened up, Steve agrees to share Rutland's room.  Christine is not happy with the idea of two men living in her apartment, but they assure her that they have no amorous intentions -- toward her, anyway.

Then, Rutland begins matchmaking, cleverly deflecting his attraction to Steve onto Christine.  At first Steve will have none of it -- he's not interested in women, thank you very much -- he prefers his hot boyfriend, Russian athlete Yuri Andreyovitch (Ted Hartley).

But a visa malfunction requires Christine to marry right away, so Steve acts the Good Samaritan.  And the marriage sticks.

His job done, Rutland heads home.  Just in case you thought he might really be gay, the cab driver suggests that he take a fertility god with him -- he and his wife have four children, but there's always room for more!

You'll find fewer obvious examples of overt same-sex desire deflected onto the feminine.  Aside from a few obligatory "My wife back home" statements, Cary Grant plays Rutland as gay.  And except for his deus-ex-machina falling in love, Jim Hutton does likewise.

This was Cary Grant's last movie role, though he continued to perform on stage (seen her in the 1930s with long-term partner Randolph Scott).  He remained active in the Hollywood community until his death in 1986.

Born in 1938, Jim Hutton had a "golly-gee" openness that was good for light romantic comedies, and he made a dozen of them in the 1960s: Where the Boys Are, Bachelor in Paradise, You're Only Young Once, Looking for Love, Sunday in New York, Who's Minding the Mint?  He died in 1979.

His son, Timothy Hutton (born 1960), was a Brat Pack hanger-on who played in a number of memorable buddy-bonding dramas, such as Taps (1981) and The Falcon and the Snowman (1986).