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REVIEW: Doukyusei -Classmates-

I settle for calling this movie boys' love and not yaoi purely because the line between the two is usually drawn at sexually explicit content, which Doukyusei does not have. But honestly, calling this movie boys' love also feels disingenuous for drawing assumptions too far in the other direction. Boys' love calls to mind anime full of subtextual glances and open-ended friendliness that deliberately leave the maybes big enough to attract a wider audience.

Kusakabe and Sajo's relationship doesn't operate under heteronormative seme/uke rules, but treats them both like men with their own emotional strengths and weaknesses.

These extremely talented women have done things with character animation I'm not sure I've ever seen in an anime before

I have mixed feelings about this review; on the one hand it does describe some of the things that make the story so good (as a manga, since as a member of the general public I haven't had a chance to see the movie yet), but on the other hand it spends more time saying what the story is not than what is is.

This is a useless distinction. The definition of "yaoi" described here was invented purely by Western fans, and it's irrelevant to how the work is produced or categorized by its creators and publishers. Dōkyūsei is a professionally-published work, so it's BL, regardless of the degree of sexual explicitness.*

Actually, they slot pretty nicely into one of the standard seme/uke builds: the reserved, nerdy brunet uke (glasses optional) and the more outgoing, demonstrative seme who pulls him out of his comfort zone

Quote:

These extremely talented women have done things with character animation I'm not sure I've ever seen in an anime before

Can anybody back up this statement with video/gif/webm? I'm intrigued, but the words themselves do nothing for this case. I always love great character animation, but my tastes and Jacob's tend to be worlds apart when it comes to aesthetics of art/animation.

Since the movie hasn't been released yet, there was a very strict no-spoilers-even-mild-ones policy for the review. Talking about what it's "not" was not only a nice way around that, but a way to encourage people who are uncomfortable with some aspects of yaoi to see this movie because it's very non-fujoshi friendly as well.

I I really wish more of her work would be brought over. I'll have to get this movie hopefully more of her work is adapted in the future too.

whereas Rakugo was amazing but not really explicitly about a gay relationship despite it pretty much being otherwise

I absolutely loved Rakugo but I hate this meme that "all male friendships can be interpreted as BL."

It's like people forget that throughout history most men didn't really have any female friends. Some men in the Middle East hold hands with each other. Nobody who is reasonably educated would point and say: "LOOK! THEY'RE LOVERS!"

It’s full of BL content.

I would argue it has a moderate amount of BL teases and winks, but not "content."

"They need to kiss\confess their feelings for it to be gay" is also (as you called it) a "meme". Not a pleasant one as well.

Reminds me of a Grimgar review where zensunni commented about subtle romantic implications between two characters (Mary and Haru). No one seemed to question their relationship even though there were no confessions,kisses or even hugs. But whatever works for you i guess.