Ogeretsu Tanaka is one of the most unique mangaka in the genre. Her beautiful artwork and storytelling just forces the reader to deeply empathize with her characters.

The actors were A+++ in this series. I don't know if it is from smoking and drinking, but unlike Japanese women, younger Japanese men often look older than their age. Both Sawamura and Beppu look older than men in their 20's. The cinematography allows their skin texture and fine lines to show, and I love that. Maybe that was to show how tough their lives have been. Both men are very handsome, but I'm just used to viewing actors filmed through filters, showing flawless skin.

What is beautiful about this series is, the ugliness that we see on the screen and the two men who fall in love in the middle of the chaos. We get to see what Japan tries to hide as a country, child abuse, sex work, CSA, child sex work, insanity and suicidal ideation. I'm not saying the country is 90% horrible, but visitors like the shounen anime, manga, Tokyo Disneyland Japan with a few temples and shrines thrown in. While people are feeding their consumerism, there is a parallel world going on.

Critique: What I did not really like was the heavy focus on child and adult abuse, replaying those scenes over and over at the expense of some very tender and thought provoking conversations between the two leads in the manga. I'm not going to spoil the manga, but the fried chicken scene in the manga had more humor and was very cute. The series did not really mention the type of work performed by Haoran. One of my biggest pet peeves was, that Haoran did not have a buzz cut when released from prison. Japanese inmates have short hair. This is also a bothers me with military movies as well, so it will not detract from the series for people who do not care about that.

Overall, this was a great series. It is not that rewatchable for me, mainly because of the amount of child abuse and CSA scenes, some of which are replayed. Highly recommend to watch it at least once.