The cinematography is wonderful in this, dark but not obscured, creating a sense of claustrophobia and hopelessness.

The acting is really good, and the leads are gorgeous. The latter isn't necessary, but it sure doesn't hurt. The actors seriously committed to the love scenes - no rubber kisses or camera angles used to cheat, and it looked more natural instead of the cheesy romance-novel-cover poses you often see.

The editing was very tight and effective, and the writing was gritty and while not entirely realistic (are all guys that are customers in Light's profession that young and hot?), the story was character-driven and made sense.

This is dark subject matter, and there are things in here that are hard to watch, so if you're triggered by sexual violence, both voluntary and involuntary, this might not be for you. None of it is so bad that it's horrifying, but it's there, albeit restrained, and you don't see the full course of what happens, only enough to let you know it's happening.

A lot of people were upset by a conclusion Shuo jumped to, but remember what Light does for a living, and how many times Shuo told him to stop, yet he continued anyway. That does lead into my only criticism:

This needed to be about 5-10 minutes longer, and better set up the misunderstanding. The fact that so many people felt really upset at Shuo demonstrates that we needed to actually see a couple of the times Light lied to Shuo instead of just being told it happened. That would have given the moment more impetus and we could have sympathized with both characters.

Anyway, I highly recommend this, and I aslo recommend you go to the director's YouTube channel and watch these two guys do comedy, because they're really good at it, especially Jed. There is also a cute and funny interview with the actors there.

I gave this 9 stars in every category except Rewatch Value. There are two scenes I'm likely to watch many times, but otherwise probably not.