Hey there! I get most of my bl recs from this blog, and I was reading through your Minato's Laundromat watch along post. I was going to watch it but the age gap really messes me up? In Old Fashion Cupcake they have a large age gap but they're still both adults. I suppose it's because of my own past, but a 17 year old with a 27 year old makes me uncomfortable. Would you be okay with the same age gap if it was irl, or only in fiction? Please take no offence to this question, btw, I'm trying to figure out if I should watch it or not.
Age Gap & BL - Taboo, Morality, Teenagers & Laundromats
Ooo, age gap. Well this might just be another JBL whips ABL into a verbal frenzy situation. You ready?
Age gap is one of those tropes that edges into taboo, so like the stepbrothers trope, you may have internalized trauma or cultural conditioning around it.
You may never be able to watch these kinds of BLs no matter what I say or what Japan does about it. And that’s fine! Please know your own limits.
Some of us have baggage around childhood, and allowing children to be children, and adults interfacing with children, and age of consent, and sexual awakening and maturity.
But it means to talk about the romantic and erotic nature of an age gap romance, we gotta talk about culture for a moment.
When does a child become an adult?
Certain cultures have a more fixed age of consent than others. Japan’s, as I talk about in my Coin watch along post, is more flexible than the USA, for example.
Anthropologically speaking, this is something to examine about yourself. What constitutes “growing up” to you?
Is it a fixed line you cross (like a birthday) - what we would call ascribed status, or is is a thing you earn = achieved status? Is it wisdom or education?
In some places, it’s the moment a biological woman gets her period or after a biological man’s voice breaks.
In others, it’s the moment she puts on a head scarf or lengthens her skirt.
It’s the moment he kills his first big game or weaves feathers into his hair.
In some places, it centers around controlling procreation and the feminine.
In others, it is about protection and the fear of youth being exploited.
In others, it’s about a transition from one role in the group to another new role in society.
Everywhere it is about crossing a threshold.
How big is that threshold, how wide that line? How much time does it occupy in our cultural consciousness? This is what teen’s grapple with. That liminal space between childhood and adulthood. How frustrating to have to exist there. How necessary to form cohesive identity. How do they know, how do we know, when they have crossed through and come out the other side?
Who decides this for you? Who decides this ABOUT you? The government? The legal system? The family unit? Yourself? Your religion? A big fuck-off party?
Why 18? Why 21? Why can 18 not fuck 17 but can fuck 21? Did you feel ready to date, to have sex, when you were 18? Or were you ready before that, after, never? Is sexuality even really an indication of adultness to you?
Would I be okay with the same age gap if it was irl, or only in fiction?
I’ve talked about this before but I came into sexual identity and desire very early, but I didn’t really date or have sex until comparatively late, and it took me longer than that to unearth my own kinks and queerness.
My parents were very permissive and I knew how to be safe and so I could have done anything I wanted to, probubly from 14 on, which is one of the reasons I didn’t.
I’ve dated up to 10 years older, and over 10 years younger, but always individuals who were qualified as legal adults by any standards.
I do think there are plenty of people too young for sex, by any definition. Certainly plenty of 18 year olds too young for it.
I am personally squicked out by the idea of engaging in any level of intimacy with much younger lovers at this point in my life. It seems like too much work and boring and also a little gross.
But I also believe in giving children responsibility, discipline, autonomy, freedom, and high functioning tasks. I do not agree with helicopter parenting or infantilization. I had my first job when I was 10. Outside the home. I liked it. I learned a lot. I traveled internationally alone for the first time when I was 8. This skews my perspective on what it means to be mature.
Would I be okay with 17 + 27 IRL?
Probubly not but it would depend on the power dynamic. If class, culture, finances, and/or gender made it clear the older person was calling all the shots while being in the position of power, I would be highly uncomfortable. I might even interfere. (If there’s a sugar daddy relationship going on I would probubly make inquiries as to the nature of the contract, and that the younger sub understood their dynamic properly. In the D/s world I do think Dominants have a responsibility to oversee other Dominants for abuse patterns.)
In fiction, I am thinking of Alexis Hall’s For Real which is an excellent gay romance about a large age, wealth, life, experience, EVERYTHING gap where the Dom is a young college age kid and the sub is an established doctor. It’s brilliant and it tackles many of these things. I highly recommend it.
Fiction allows for a certain amount of suspension of disbelief. Also it allows us to see into intimacy in a way we ordinarily can’t outside of our own lives.
Shin is younger but he is also VERY MUCH the aggressor. He makes all the first moves. They have not kissed, at these ages, and I do not think they will.
I’m going to ask you a question.
How would this age dynamic make you feel if it were say: man 18 & woman 28, and he’s a freshman in college and she’s in a comfortingly genderized service job, say waitress? How about if he is a young CEO and she’s his secretary?
Is part of the discomfort coming from the gayness? (Because in the west there is a long history of cultural association between gay & pedophile which is very insidious and his impacted the queer community quite severely, it may be acting on your subconscious.)
Is part of the discomfort coming from the life state? High School. Is leaving high school actually a conference of maturity, or just a societal excuse we westerners use to sluff off our filial responsibility to our youth?
Is it all about the fixed age? Is there really that a big a jump between 17 and 18 or does it just make us feel better because certain laws say 18 = adult?
It’s worth making yourself uncomfortable with thought experiments around this dynamic to try to understand why you feel this way. After all, you gave me a thought experiment, I’m just returning the favor.
But honestly this is part of Coin’s point. To make you think about what it means to be adult and mature. To make you uncomfortable as a watcher.
Okay the interesting thing about comparing Old Fashion Cupcake (AKA Cupcake) to Minato’s Laundromat (AKA Coin) is that they are actually quite similar.
Younger seme by 10 years is the one doing the pursuing.
Older uke behaves in a childish and flirtatious manner as part of his personality.
Both semes are clearly sexually frustrated.
Both have pined for a decade.
Both narratives are from Japan.
But in Cupcake the age gap almost amusing. Especially to some of us. That the characters are even worried about this kind of age gap, at their age? It’s silly. Why?
Well, the age gap is there, but really these two are at the same life stage, so it’s not the driver of the story. Emotional maturity is. Learning how to love and appreciate yourself (and what time has beaten you into) so you can be open to affection and sensation and life. Togawa is defined by his willingness to participate in all the world has to offer - those HAMSTER cheeks, are a way of showing his unconsciousness indulgence in sensation. While Nozue is defined by his careful withdrawal, his unwillingness to participate, to take risks, and his own self-hatred and sadness because he KNOWS, he is mature enough to realize, that he did this to himself.
Neither Minato nor Shin are mature in this regard. Both characters are not self aware. Both characters lack emotional IQ. Shin is incapable of teaching Minato how to open himself back up to affection, because Shin does not have enough life experience to empathize with why Minato ran away and shut down in the first place.
Shin is too young. He thinks he would never run. He thinks love is the answer. He thinks love is enough.
Minato’s Laundromat is a high school student paired with a grown (if immature) man. Same character dynamics as Cupcake. Same age gap as Cupcake. But this narrative must face its age gap head on. And that’s why it’s making people uncomfortable.
Japan is using to Coin tackle notions of maturity but not just sexual awakening and desire, but how maturity translates to emotional intelligence and ownership of self.
Both characters are mature in certain ways.
Shin is the eldest of a large family, he’s basically raised his siblings, he’s taught himself to cook, he’s driven in his studies, he wants to become a doctor. He knows how to be a boyfriend, or he thinks he does. He knows what he desires. He knows how to ask and he knows how to flirt. Shin knows who he is and what he wants and that is mature, but also he is performing the role of a seme as he thinks it’s supposed to be undertaken. He is acting the role of the boyfriend that he has read about in his comic books, it’s not (yet) natural to him, the way it is to Togawa. But he doens’t realize this because he’s too young.
Minato has two failed relationships behind him and a failed career. He knows what it is to hurt. He knows things don’t work out. He knows wanting a thing is not the same as having it and holding on. He has found his way to a kind of peace, and kind of inertia. Unlike Nozue, he is genuinely happy, he’s not at all lost, but he is hiding, and he is scared. But this he knows about himself. Minato is hiding that he is gay, he is acting in a way to fit back into his home, but at heart he is an open and honest person, naturally kind and gregarious, so he too is acting, performing a role, it’s just he knows it.
Both Cupcake and Coin are about bravery, but in the one case we have a clear model example of how to be brave, an end goal, and it is Togawa. In the other we have conflict over bravery, because it means something different when you are at different life stages.
Shin can be as brave as humanly possible, and he is constantly putting himself out there, constantly asking and begging and pushing Minato to give in to their desires. But while that may be a model of courage, it is not safe for Minato. Minato’s bravery is in resisting. Is in not giving in. And it will eventually be in hurting Shin to drive him away. Even lying to Shin about his feelings.
Shin cannot be trusted because he is too young. For no other reason. The age gap is the problem because of life experience. This story isn’t really about whether it’s “okay” for them to sleep together because that is just not going to happen, no matter what Shin thinks. And any perceptive watcher with know this. (Also this is not dark JBL, dark JBL would have gone there.)
Minato may be immature but he has a fixed moral compass. This story isn’t about that or sacrificing self for desire, those kinds of discourses are left to the older BLs and noona romances, Japan has already tackled it. They’re moving on.
Shin can only be brave, it’s all he knows to try. He cannot be patient. He cannot give up. Minato can only be a coward, it’s all he’s ever been. His only experience is in taking a risk and hurting himself, or taking a risk by betraying his own identity and hurting others.
Minato sees only one outcome: hurt, either his pain or Shin’s. His maturity will be in realizing that the right thing to do will hurt both of them. But for now he remains in limbo, unable to lie and say “I don’t want Shin,” because he is an honest person and he does want Shin.
But also unable to say yes because everything in him is screaming that even if it were right, this is the wrong time. Shin is, by any measure, too young. Minato’s instinct is to run, but he has already run to his hometown and laundromat for safety. And now Shin is challenging him in that space too.
This is what makes this show so tense. We know Minato will not crumble, but the challenge is constant and it is real. And it makes us all, including Minato and Shin, feel unsafe.
Shin is making Minato’s place of refuge unsafe. Minato has nowhere else to go. That’s why this show it titled the way it is.
The laundromat is being used as a metaphor for Minato’s life state.
That’s why each ep always opens and closes on the laundromat. That’s why Shin in ALWAYS depicted in doorways. Between inside and out, one room and another.
Shin is shown coming inside Minato’s spaces.
Shin is desperate to be invited into Minato’s home.
Minato goes outside the building to confront Shin.
Shin waits on the threshold, fainting from heatstroke. Because... he cannot wait.
Because Shin is a teenager, his is in that liminal time of life. He is neither child nor adult. He is himself the spirit of transition. This series is using him occupying thresholds as a metaphor for his life state. He is both AT a threshold and IS a threshold.
Shin is in motion, trying to fit, trying to occupy Minato’s space. In and out of the doorways of Minato’s safe little life, his laundromat. Minato who is ahead of him, settled, hiding under blankets, tending to his machines, embraced by his community, home.
Shin thinks Minato is his home. Is his destination.
And the horror of this show is that there is a distinct possibility that Shin is right.
It’s just this is not the right time. Shin hasn’t had a journey yet. You can’t come home, if you never leave it. And you can’t appreciate it, if you never go. That’s the nature of growing up.
Shin may have found his nest. But is it his, if he never learned to fly?
So it is Minato we must trust not to make a mistake. Because Shin is absolutely going to. Shin has put Minato in the position of having to push him out of the nest and watch him fall. Watch him get hurt. Watch him fly away. Minato who actually wants to be the safety net, who saves children from drowning, who wants so desperately to be loved. Minato is going to have to act in a way that is not only disingenuous to his own character, but that he knows Shin will see as a betrayal. Minato is going to have to hope that Shin will go away and grow up and realize that such a betrayal was actually an act of love.
Wether you like this show will depend on whether you trust Minato to do that. Or trust the narrative.
So I can’t answer whether you should watch it yet, because i don’t know. I do trust it. But this is Japan, they always surprise me.
Here's a No Stupid Questions podcast about some of this stuff: When Do You Become an Adult?
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