Aichaku

I'm not a foreigner and I'm not gay. I don't understand everything in this movie. I liked that it still made me feel like I was not an enemy when I watched it. It didn't make fun of Japanese people and straight people were not the villain. It was about life conflicts and all kinds of love. The villain is just situations the characters are in. They have to figure out what is moving forward.

Was it a perfect movie? No. Was it an interesting movie? Yes. I recommend it. It is worth checking out, especially since it's free on prime video. If it was not free, I am not sure what I would think or feel. For something free though I felt like it had a lot of value, so maybe I would not mind.

I was a bit worried when I first started watching this because it looks less like a normal BL movie than I was expecting. Having said that, I think this movie kind of got the balance right.

The romance in the movie is lovely. It was very cute, but still felt realistic enough that non-BL fans could enjoy it. The starry sky scene and the cafe fantasy were for sure for BL fans. I don't know if there was ever a foreign lead in a BL movie before, but this might be the first. It was very interesting to watch and added some elements to the movie that I hadn't seen before in BL.

If someone is looking for a LGBTQ+ movie that has strong social messages attached to it, I'm not sure if they will be satisfied with this. It certainly has a message. For a BL movie it almost has too much of a message. (Do you see what I mean about getting the balance right?) I thought that the main message was about love in general and how important it is. What I really liked was that Aichaku was about all kinds of love, so it was easy to feel attached to the world of the movie.

Since Aichaku means "attachment," perhaps that was the goal. If so, they certainly accomplished it.

This drama rom-com felt a little bit dry in my opinion. Maybe because there's not enough soundtrack to support the movie? Music can influence a movie greatly if you can pick the right ones. Maybe there wasn't enough budget to hire some musicians? Too bad. Plot wise, it's decent and pretty interesting to watch. It's just that this movie is also about green card fraud. So it's in the grey area with the law. But that's the only thing in the movie that raises some eye brows. Everything else is just good drama and dry humor. It's well directed and the acting was passable. Especially for non-famous actors and actresses.

I struggled to get through this film and finally gave up about 70 minutes in.

This entire film is apparently a showcase for the (American) lead actor's Japanese speaking ability. As a story, it is predictable and laughable and not really that interesting.

There is a lot of unnecessary dialogue, there are over-the-top screaming scenes (which are de rigueur for Japanese films, even, apparently, ones featuring foreign leads), there are tired tropes (English teachers in Japan), and there are huge miscalculations by the writer/star, mainly about why anyone would care that he can speak Japanese as well as he does.

The entire onsen scene came across as totally unbelievable and bizarre and fake.

The lead actor does tons of mugging and has apparently learned every single Japanese facial expression or reaction, since he has very few of his own.

His character is not developed at all, and as such, I could not care what happens to him.

The Japanese actors all fare better, and the lead Japanese "half" actor is legitimately hot and sexy and has potential in the right story (not this one).

There was tons of unnecessary (and incorrectly chosen) music with singing, played over scenes where the actors were talking -- and yet, how could we understand what they were saying when they were being drowned out by background music?

The two star rating is for the hot Japanese male lead, who gives us a hint of what paradise might be like in the onsen, but it is nearly totally destroyed by the virginal worry-wart first-time-ever in an onsen foreigner who acts like a scared girl on her first date.

I have lived in Japan for a long time and I understand a lot of what was going on, and the idea that we are supposed to care about anyone in this film is one that apparently never occurred to the writer/star, since he spent his entire time on screen being obvious about everything he said and did, all without a soupçon of subtlety.

In 2023, I participated in the crowd funding for this and Max Emerson's novel. I was a bit worried because it felt like there was a long wait between the end of the campaign and the release of the movie. They apparently sent out an email with download codes for the movie in 2024 for people who purchased it from the crowd funding and I must have missed it.

I was really happy to see the finished movie and I'm glad to say it was worth the wait. They said that they were mainly using the money from the crowd funding to help with post production and it really shows. The music they got for the movie is really good and I was surprised to find that most of the songs are original.

Originality really is what makes this movie special. There's so many things that are different about this movie, it's hard to write it all with out giving a lot of the movie away. They way they play with language, the setting, the flow of the characters all felt really fresh and made you want to see more of it. Also, as a mom I really liked the way moms were portrayed in this movie.

I hope there's another movie or something else. Aichaku ends in a way that all of the questions are answered, but the characters are all moving on to new things. You want to see how that works out.