Your BL curriculum breakdown today was *chef’s kiss* and the 10 cutest BLs was delightful but sometimes this little sunshine likes a little more heat and dark!
Have you done a breakdown of the darker ones?
Ooo, thank you and this is interesting. Because I recently got Gaga, I’ve been working my way through their back catalogue which includes some of the most dark BLs ever made (Japanese, of course).
How dark do you want it? Do you want a list of dark BLs that I still think are good and watchable? Or just a list of some of the darkest BLs ever?
Top 10 BLs without an HEA still worth watching & 3 that will wreck you
But these aren’t necessarily dark. However, those 10 are about what I would go with as my favorites. Since I don’t wallow much. I respect the need to wallow, though. So I guess I have to remove my taste and really play.
I am not going to include betrayal shows (like My Bromance, In Between Seasons, Grey Rainbow, History3: Make Our Days Count where the “twist” is one of the characters dyeing unexpectedly) or the Doomed Gays of Chinese History (e.g. The Male Queen).
Also, some of the following might not really qualify as BLs anymore. I did not include microfilms. If I remember where I saw it I included the source.
The 10 Darkest BLs I’ve Ever Seen
TRIGGER WARNING ON EVERYTHING!!! A lot of them are also VERY high heat. These are in order, starting with darkest/worst.
1. The Shortest Distance series (Japan 2019-2020 GaGa) [1. The Shortest Distance is Round (Noir) AKA Saitankyori wa Mawari Kudokute; 2. The Shortest Distance is Round 2: Rain and Soda AKA Saitankyori wa Mawari Kudokute: Ame to Soda Mizu; 3. The Shortest Distance 3: Fallen Flowers AKA Saitankyori Wa Mawari Kudokute: Rakka Ryūsui] - OKAY SO this is the darkest BL I’ve ever seen, it’s so dark it pushes into absurdist. It gets to a point where you’re like: so he cuts off his own junk for love? Of course he does. What else would he do? It’s teacher/student, false accusation, hustler, explicit sex with multiple men, and includes abuse, rape, violence, and mutilation, possibly a few others as well. But seriously, by the final installment I was all *yawn” TRY to shock me, boys.
2. Dangerous Drugs of Sex AKA Sei no Gekiyaku (Japan 2020 GaGa) - erm, right, so this is a suicidal man kidnapped right before he jumps and then kept and sexually tortured (high kink) by a doctor for… reasons. Explicit. Ends “happy” by some people’s standards.
3. Double Mints (Japan 2017 GaGa) - codependency, murder gay, bullying, humiliation and torture kink, self mutilation, Yakuza violence, rape, attempted suicide. Ya know, whatever.
4. Forbidden Love (Japan 2008 GaGa) - whipping boy trope, servant who grew up in the sinister mafia-esk family. Spoiled, rich, loose-cannon seme madly in love with the older, somber, moral-compass uke. Homophobic family, cheating, murder gay, incest, & necrophilia! Oh goodie.
5. Boys Love the series (Japan 2006 YouTube) - murder gay, mild necrophilia, cheating, abuse, rape, and ends with suicide for love.
6. Boys Love the movie AKA Boys Love 2 Schoolboy Crush (Japan 2007 YouTube) - teacher/student, obsession, desperation, abuse, mutilation.
7. Light (Taiwan 2021 GaGa) - ironically named movie about a street hustler (incest, rape, abuse survivor all depicted on screen) who falls in (and in love with) an undercover cop.
8. A Round Trip to Love (2016 China YouTube) - 2 parts, obsession goes rotten in China’s favorite way: kidnapping, rape, and uke sacrifices himself into death for the sake of his abuser. Because how else could it possibly go?
9. The Effect (Thailand 2019 YouTube) - classic uni-set Thai BL, seme falls madly in love with beautiful uke but it goes the way such kinds of obsession actually would in real life - into stalking, rape, abuse, accusations, and suicide.
10. Red Wine on a Dark Night (Thailand 2015 DramaCool) - I think this might be meant to be a slasher flick but it comes of more as basically “baby is a murder gay” weeeeeee.
Moody Arthouse Smackdoodle
Some that are more moody and angsty and cerebral dealing with depression and the like with an edge of honest queerness.
Your Name Engraved Herein (Taiwan 2020 Netflix) - this movie is fantastic but it is also seriously depressing, it’s a self acceptance journey, but if you wanna wallow in high quality acting and serious gay drama, this’ll do it.
Goodbye Mother AKA Thua Me Con D (Vietnam 2019 Netflix) - like YNEH this is a great movie but it deals openly with homophobia, bashing, family trauma and social acceptance.
For Love, We Can (Hong Kong 2014) - an indie movie about parental homophobia, light/dark pairing, and (of course) HIV.
The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese AKA Kyuso wa Chizu no Yume wo Miru (Japan 2020) - obsession, cheating, breakup, reunion, then break up again, explicit.
Pornographer movie series - AKA The Novelist, Mood Indigo, Pornographer Playback (Japan 2018-2020) emotional manipulation, cheating, obsession, seduction, May/December (age gap AKA younger/older), kink, touch of necrophilia, explicit.
Method (Korea 2017) - May/December, actor idol pairing, that should have been everything I wanted in life but it’s more about the actor cheating on his wife and their weird “artsy” relationship and frankly, I hated this. And I don’t say that lightly.
Itsuka no Kimi e (Japan 2007 YouTube) - okay this is basically about a college student who saves this boy from drowning and then gets embroiled in his, and his identical twin’s messed up lives. It goes very weird.
His the series AKA I Didn’t Think I Would Fall In Love (Japan 2019) - boy goes to visit his absent father ends up kinda homeless on the beach gets adopted by local family falls in love with the boy working and living with them. Lots of long drawn out glances.
Innocent (Taiwan 2021 GaGa) - mental health, childhood trauma, actually kinda sweet.
Okay But Make it Really BL-ish
These are all more BL with a strong representative sampling of darker themes and problematic yaoi tropes. So if you are enjoying Utsukushii Kare then these are worth investigating. In thematic order.
Does the Flower Bloom? (Japan 2018 YouTube) - bridging the gap to the arthouse style this is a May/December romance about an artist student and the house he inherits from his recently dead parents and all the people around him who are obsessed with him, including an older man.
Takumi-Kun (Japan 2007-2011 YouTube) - series features all the problematic tropes and watches almost exactly like yaoi reads, the leads do have good chemistry, though. Includes incest, abuse, dub-con, and obsession.
Addicted Heroin (China 2016 Viki) - unfinished due to censorship but still very good, well acted and shot, high school set, rich kid falls madly for the genius poor kid in his class, starts an aggressive pursuit, includes kidnapping for love, obsession, stepbrother trope, plus some cheating. I love this one.
Capture Lover (China 2020 Viki) - the ending is a touch confusing but basically this is the rich kid seme with nothing better to do, put to work in an office, falls hard for the strict boss, moves himself in and aggressively seduces him. Like a grown up Addicted. (Features Han Jing Chen, China’s Singto.)
River Knows Fish Heart (China 2018 GaGa) - this BL managed to sneak by the censors probably because it’s not very well acted and low budget. It’s also in Addicted territory, only this time with the jock who falls madly for the nerd and then just moves into his house to takes over his life. The tsundere uke is VERY tsundere and the seme is hella pushy so it goes right into dubcon territory but also it’s very teen angst about it.
Irresistible Love: Secrets of the Valet 1 & 2 (China 2016 YouTube) - 2 parts, I not-so-secretly love this BL. Kidnapping, whipping boy, obsession, mutilation, very hard fought happy ending (in one version). Absolutely classic Chinese BL pre-censorship.
Legend of Long Yang AKA Rebirth (China 2017 GaGa) - whipping boy trope… literally, servant character takes the strap for the prince, who then makes him his bodyguard and lover when he becomes king. Low budget historical, comes off as kind of cosplay wuxia version of Irresistible Love, but we get (in the credits) an actual kiss, and they both live. So yay for small mercies.
HIStory Obsessed (Taiwan 2017 Viki) - the softest version of the world’s most problematic yaoi tropes, while still managing to be those tropes.
HIStory 4: Close to You (Taiwan 2021 Viki) the side dish plot is basically a pastiche of problematic BL tropes inherited from the above. Great chemistry, high heat, stepbrothers, dubcon, obsession, stalker etc…
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