(10 episodes)
What’s it about ?
Adaptation of a yaoi romantic comedy manga.
Characters
Izumi, our main character, is drifting through college. He’s got delusions of becoming a manga artist, but his art’s worse than mine. He’s basically just an otaku, fanboying over this one magical girl series.
His parents would very much like him to follow in the family business, i.e. show business. Mom’s still acting, while Dad has moved on to running a talent agency. (Bro is fronting a famous rock band.) But Izumi just won’t have any of this. He just feels too awkward on set.
A decade or so ago, Izumi did act in a wedding agency’s commercial with his parents ; he was a last-minute replacement for the child actress catching the bouquet. (Yes, actress. Izumi looks so feminine that it wasn’t hard to wing it.)
Ryouma, who was the boy playing opposite Izumi in that commercial, is very interested in the wedding agency’s project of making a sequel. His one condition is reuniting the whole original cast. The parents are delighted, as he’s now a very famous actor/model. Izumi’s way less enthusiastic, but they eventually managed to bribe it into participating.
Sagara, the uptight manager, is one of the few people on set who knows Izumi’s not a girl (the others being his personal makeup/costuming squad, who’ve been sworn to secrecy). You can see him obviously having little patience for Izumi’s apathy, but damn it this is his job and he’s going to do it well. What he didn’t anticipate : somebody changing the script at the last moment to include a kiss between Ryouma and Izumi. Uh oh…
Production Values
Not very good ; the standard yaoi character designs are rather ugly.
Overall Impression
Well, it’s yaoi. I was all prepared to write it off as “not my thing”, especially as it looks rather shabby.
… And then the jokes start hitting a homerun, and it turns out I’m actually enjoying this quite a lot. This is fun. That the premises seems devoid of the rape subtext so endemic to the genre is a big plus, but it’s just got charm. Izumi’s parents are ridiculously entertaining, the little pokes at show business are quite funny, and the whole thing is quite well scripted overall, with good comedic timing.
I’m surprised to say this has a good chance of staying on my watchlist.
