Living with Him (2024)

heartwarming slice of life/romance series (need a Haruna spin off)

Overall: I enjoyed this friends/roommates turned into romantic partner stories, though it could have used slightly faster pacing (almost rated it 8.5 but I liked their dynamic so it ended up a 9). 8 episodes about 25 minutes each. Airing on GagaOOLala https://www.gagaoolala.com/en/videos/4215/living-with-him-2024-e01

What I Liked
- caring/sweet moments
- clear flashbacks and enjoyed seeing them when they were young
- ex girlfriend wasn't a cliche, non-cliche female characters
- a character was a bit naive but he did figure things out and communicated
- supportive family members, dynamics felt realistic
- Haruna was such a good wingman and friend
- overall realistic with trying to maintain boundaries but also being jealous
- production value (nice color symbology which included their clothes, pillows, mugs, toothbrushes, etc)

Room For Improvement
- not a fan of starting a series with a voice over exposition dump
- episode 2 had a too long recap of episode 1 at the beginning
- some slow pacing
- Ryota did annoy me a bit but I tried to keep in mind that he had low self-esteem and was likely struggling with internalized homophobia and/or heteronormativity
- cliche almost told something and got interrupted, the running scene

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Simple yet sweet mutual pining love story between two childhood friends

Seeing reviews and comments about how this show was bad and boring, I decided I will give my own thought about it after weekly watching each episode. (Apologizing beforehand for my clumsy English )

The Characters:

Kazuhito and Ryota, for me, are fresh characters. While their story is simple and not much different from other Jdrama that had been done before, I love how these guys tried their best (clumsily) tried to communicate their feelings for each other the best they could as college teenagers. Kazuhito, being born in a more traditional family and has the pressure of being perfect, he tends to be the quiet one and keep his feelings to himself afraid that he could make the other uncomfortable while Ryota, while he’s awkward, he’s big brother in his family and chose to be the one initiated the question which Kazuhito would not hesitate to give answer. They are perfect combination for me and both actors did very well with their chemistry.

The Story:

I used to don’t have much patience for slow burn slice of life BL but a few good one taught me to love it and I really love how Living with Him did it. Some might say they are too slow and dragging but I think the pacing was perfect for a character to prepare his thought process to seriously consider his friend’s romantic feelings toward him.
Kazuhito has years to get ready to accept his own feeling but Ryota only had a short time and It’s necessary for him to have space for thoughts.
Each episode focused on how Ryota fell in love with Kazuhito and come to accept his feelings and decided how he should give his response which was realistic for someone like Ryota.

A lot were complaining about the lack of passionate kiss in this drama but it’s exactly following the source material (except their smut manga spin-off), Kazuhito barely kissed Ryota after confession in the manga which Ryota in the manga even asked him one day how could he hold himself back so much lol and Kazuhito was just being his considerate self and didn’t want to startle Ryota who just recently come to accept his feeling.

My only complaint would be the filter and colors choice used for this drama which was not my favorite and I think it didn’t give the Actor’s visual full Justice but it wasn’t too bad that distracted me from enjoying the drama overall.

In conclusion, Living with Him wasn’t for everyone but It’s definitely for me. I will put it as one of my favorite JBL from now.

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