Japanese television continues to surprise with various styles and themes and this is confirmed by 'Happy of the End', the Japanese series that adapts the manga of the same name by Ogeretsu Tanaka, published in installments in the monthly digital manga magazine Boys' Love Qpa, a work winner of the Best Deep category at the Chil Chil BL 2022 Awards.
In 2021, Tanaka stated through an interview with Chil Chil that he came up with the plot while walking through the Tokyo neighborhood of Shinjuku one morning and wanted to write a story featuring its landscape. His frequent nighttime tours through its neon-filled streets, narrow pedestrian alleys, bars, restaurants and businesses of dubious reputation to obtain reference material for his interior and cover illustrations, were described as a "terrifying" experience.
The idea of ​​bringing the story told in the manga to moving images has since pursued the Japanese actor, screenwriter, assistant director and director Tomoyuki Furumaya.
Owner of a film universe with dozens of films, television series and specials over 30 years, which speaks of a feverish work backed by a recognized quality based on a style that identifies him, and makes him stand out among other directors, thanks to his obsession with telling stories conceived in a minimalist narrative design full of humanism, visions that between pain, suffering, irony and a good dose of humor cover the most universal themes.
This has been the case since his university years, when at only 24 years old, his 16 mm film, 'Shakunetsu no dojjibōru' (1992), won the grand prize at the Pia Film Festival, earning him a Pia scholarship to make his first theatrical feature film, 'This Window Is Yours', in 1994, with which he won the coveted "Dragons and Tigers" trophy at the Vancouver International Film Festival, ultimately obtaining the award for new directors from the Directors Guild of Japan in that same year.
With 'Bad Company', filmed 7 years later, the filmmaker from Nagano Prefecture won a Tiger Award and the FIPRESCI Award at the 2001 Rotterdam Film Festival, while with 'Sayonara Midori-chan' he came in second place at competition at the 2005 Three Continents Festival. He has also worked on television shows such as Mori no Asagao.
Faithful to the emotional core of the original manga, Tomoyuki Furumaya gives up his position behind the camera in episode 6 to let director Takahiro Komura do it, although always with his gaze and care down to the smallest details. Meanwhile, the script is written by the same director and Tadano Miako, who plays Keito/Haoran's mother.
The conflict in 'Happy of the End', the romantic and psychological drama with an LGBT+ theme, is exposed from the first minutes: disowned by his family for being gay and rejected by his newly married ex-boyfriend, Chihiro Kashiwagi, a "cool" young man, tough, lonely and gullible about 25 years old, meets Keito in a bar, a beautiful, mysterious man with a strong sense of obsession of the same age, and suggests that they have a one-night stand.
However, at the hotel, Keito beats Chihiro unconscious. The next morning, Keito reveals that he was sent by Matsuki, Chihiro's former employer, whom he had invited to live with him as a "pet", to retrieve his cards after Chihiro stole them when he was evicted for sleeping with other men. Without a place to live, Chihiro ends up staying with Keito.
After Chihiro confesses that he is a boy who feels so empty that he has thought about death, Haoran, who also experiences loneliness, proposes sex to him, the same sex interrupted on the night him attacked him. Through emotional ups and downs, their relationship becomes deeper and deeper. Through emotional ups and downs, their relationship becomes deeper and deeper.
While living together as friends with benefits, Chihiro and Keito grow closer and open up about their past: Chihiro tells Keito that he was disowned by his family for being gay and how he fell in love with a classmate in high school, who left him four years later to marry a woman.
For his part, Keito reveals that his real name is Haoran and that his drug addict mother is a prostitute who came from China. Furthermore, he confesses that due to his mother's abandonment, he was forced at the age of 15 to work as a minor prostitute with older and violent clients. He tells him that Matsuki himself had been one of his regulars at that time.
While living together as friends with benefits, Chihiro and Keito grow closer and open up about their past: Chihiro tells Keito about him family and how him fell in love in high school with a classmate, who abandoned him four more years. late to marry a woman.
Meanwhile, Keito reveals that his real name is Haoren and that his drug addict mother is a prostitute who came from China. Haoren has never known love. Being abandoned by his mother, and without the support of any other close being, the child no older than four or five years old is forced to live on the street and at the age of 15 to work as a minor prostitute with older and violent clients. He will confess to Chihiro that Matsuki himself had been one of his regulars at that time.
The series is populated by tormented and depressed characters, who seek light on their path and when they find it, they cling to it. When pain chokes us and makes us relive our darkest thoughts, it will be love's turn to make its way to want us to embrace life. Although everything seems to agree to plunge Haoren and Chihiro into the deepest darkness, both will fight tooth and nail to find closure to their traumatic past and live happily together as a couple.
According to the author of the manga, he wanted to show through an ironic distortion the inner world of heartbreak and suffering of "Haoran" (浩然), which symbolizes vast or great, because thanks to the incorrect pronunciation of this Chinese character by the character who never went to school and whose mother abandoned him early, he becomes "Haoren" (好人), which literally translates as "good man, good guy or good person."
In this way, instead of giving the character attributes related to his name, Ogeretsu Tanaka gives him qualities completely at odds with his life full of pain and difficulties.
After being asked by Chihiro why he makes love with his clothes on, we will soon discover that Haoren, in addition to the wounds he carries in his soul, carries physical scars on his body as a result of the abuse and humiliation received in the past.
Only love breeds wonder. Only love turns mud into a miracle. Only love can restore Haoran's greatness and nobility.
As the episodes progress we will discover two fascinating, unique, complex characters.
The series stands out for telling an extreme, but very human and touching story about two lonely and broken men who are hungry for love and affection. Chihiro is what you would call a gigolo, while Haoran is someone who doesn't understand the feelings of others. In this sense, both compensate for what the other lacks. They complement each other, and by being together, they recover their emotions, direct their lives and heal their souls with the power of love.
One without a penny in his pocket and a roof over his head. The other, with a rubbish job as a "scout for stewardesses and sex workers" making girls sell their bodies. Living on the fringes of society, Chihiro and Haoran could begin a new life together out of their pain and suffering.
Once Chihiro takes Haoran for a walk to Ueno Park, a short distance from Shinjuku, where they both live, it will be revealed that she does not even know of his existence. This will confirm to us his bitter, sad, broken, empty life.
Without education and even a telephone, those who have never set foot in any school will receive jokes from other people, like those from a real estate agent, because Haoren will not know how to respond politely. All this will define and configure the character.
The latest work from the director of 'Candy Color Paradox' stars Rei Sawamura from "Living With Him", known to BL lovers for playing Haruna Keita in the series 'Kare no Iru Seikatsu', from 2024.
Rei Sawamura, who is also a member of One N' Only, does a convincing job playing Haoran, a young man with emotional problems. As Haoran attempts to build a life together with Chihiro, he is harassed by Maya (Yosuke Asari), an abusive pimp for whom Haoren previously worked. On the other hand, he grieves for her mother, a Chinese woman who works as a prostitute and whose drug addiction has affected her so much that he no longer recognizes Haoren.
Beppu Yurai, the actor who plays Kashiwagi Chihiro, is today one of the most in-demand actors in Japanese television and cinema, after playing Saruhara Shinichi / Saru Brother in the tokusatsu franchise 'Avataro Sentai Donbrothers'.
This actor does a great job showing the range of Chihiro's emotions as he tries to make sense of her relationship with the young man who fulfills assignments of dubious decency.
With a life of suffering and emotional deprivation very similar to Haoran's, Chihiro's own older brother refuses to recognize him in public for being homosexual. Alienated by an exclusionary society, these two people with their broken souls and wounded bodies find salvation in each other.
Both Beppu Yurai and Rei Sawamura are natural actors who add depth to the story when they are on screen together. Their performances are one of the many reasons why 'Happy of the End' is worthy of being appreciated by the public.
Beppu Yurai shines as Chihiro, sexually hungry and in love. Rei Sawamura plays Haoran with an inner sadness that allows the viewer to feel empathy for him. Without a doubt, they are well-defined characters.
I mean I absolutely love Rei Sawamura as Haoren and Beppu Yurai as Chihiro. They act magnificently in their respective roles. Both imbue their characters with all their heart. You can see that the two of them are really going through an emotional journey, and the Japanese actors find those moments to infuse them with this immense amount of empathy and conviction, while also playing a quiet strength and determination.
Using flashbacks, Tomoyuki Furumaya presents the central relationship of the series in what turn out to be real places and conflicts. When the story leads to the inevitably challenging conversations that Chihiro and Haoran must have, they are never hysterical or overly dramatic. They are two people trying to understand each other and still trying to connect. It's scary and difficult... like any relationship.
The creators of 'Happy of the End' are very aware of details like these, although the series does not stop at making important points, the implications are clear and given depth through scenes that show these two people together, trying to maintain a connection and taking care of each other.
Another important detail comes from the characters' interior monologues, from which we get a vision of the cruel and suffocating world in which they have lived. I normally have a low opinion of voiceover, outside of very specific genre conventions, but the creators of 'Happy of the End' make it seem appropriate for this story.
Both Haoran and Chihiro tell us a lot of important things in their inner monologue and mostly character details rather than simply a device to advance the plot. It works as a plot driver, but not in an egregious way. No, rather, the interior monologues are cleverly used to remind those of us who do not share the background of both characters how they have experienced their personal traumas, but also their desires for redemption and to find their place in the world. The interior monologues give weight to the series in a way I didn't expect.
Both will have the support of Ryohei Kaji (Yuki Kubota), an older brother figure to Chihiro and Haoran, a man who, although he gets angry quickly, is a good guy deep down, as Tanaka drew this character in the manga.
The cast works excellently together, giving realism and depth to the relationship of the main characters.
The soundtrack is composed by Kōji Endō. The opening track is "2Colors" by The Spellbound featuring Jesse (Rize/The Bonez.
The series has an undeniable richness in its various artistic components: the photography, the sets, in constant mutation, the music, and the essential editing work, which place us, as viewers, before a moving story in which the sudden friendship between the main characters is strange, but believable. The complexity of Chihiro and Haoran's relationship and the discovery of their tragic pasts is what drives the series.
What I like most about 'Happy of the End' is its strong, sensitive and moving message to those people who feel like they are missing something, or who want something but don't know what it is, or who are struggling every day and feel somehow dissatisfied. Haoran and Chihiro live their lives to the fullest even in the depths of despair. Despite their frustrations and stormy pasts, these characters do not give up and fight against all adversities.
On the other hand, I am struck by the fact that Haoran, like the semen in the relationship, is more androgynous than the uke. Likewise, this is how the characters were designed in the original work.
The series is a heartbreaking, sensitive and honest portrait of two young people who are emotionally connected to each other despite the traumatic and heartbreaking nature of their past.
The landscape and cinematography are beautiful despite the harsh reality that the series exposes and affects many young Japanese in the circumstances reflected through the protagonists. For decades we have wanted to believe that Japanese youth have everything to be happy in the nation that is considered the third largest economy in the world.
However, we then discovered, through the novel coronavirus, as the country prepared to host the Japan 2020 Olympic Games, that hundreds of thousands of Japanese, perhaps millions, many of them young, many of them prostitutes, many of them disowned by their parents for being homosexual, many of them harassed and discriminated against by a heteronormative and patriarchal society that refuses to accept LGBT+ people, they live in internet cafes throughout the Land of the Rising Sun, faced with the impossibility of being able to pay renting a home.
With the closure of these establishments due to the quarantine, suffering the eviction of their places to sleep, and faced with the increasing precariousness of their lives, they were forced to steal a snack from a child and run away, wait for someone to leave them abandoned in a park or a bus stop a box of chocolates that will be checked to see if there is still any left inside to put in your mouth, prostitute yourself for a few coins that are enough to buy a newspaper with which to cover the cold of the night in the streets, or spending the night among garbage bags, outdoors, along with the darkness, inclement weather and violence, portrayed in the series.
'Happy of the End' is a moving and fascinating study, beautifully told and skillfully acted, of two men struggling with the consequences of living through traumatic events.
The series fulfills its objective for me, in addition to wanting to jump to the other side of the screen to accompany Chihiro and Haoran on their journey of suffering, pain and shared dreams of achieving happiness, inviting me to reflect on a raw and sad reality.