We enjoy so many Asian series on Netflix that our homepage is filled with Asian shows. I first got hooked on Korean shows like Crash Landing on You about a spoiled rich South Korean woman who, thanks to a sudden windstorm, finds herself in North Korea somewhat like Dorothy found herself in Oz. This version of North Korea is relatively benign compared to the grim reality of that dictatorship. Of course, she is discovered by a handsome North Korean soldier who hides her. Their bickering-to-love trajectory is straight out of traditional romcoms. Later I got hooked on Korean mysteries, Japanese series about socially inept chefs (food plays a major role in Japanese series), and Japanese medical shows, particularly the charming Dr. Coto’s Clinic and After School Doctor. Then I happened upon a series called Love Is a Poison which sent me down the rabbit hole of BL (Boy Love).

The Japanese series LOVE IS A POISON is one of the rare Asian BL series available on Netflix. The series centers on Ryoma Shiba, an uptight thirtyish lawyer whose only interest is career advancement. He’s already on the way to becoming Senior Partner in his prestigious law firm. His world is shaken when a mysterious young man, Haruto, keeps showing up. By the end of the first episode, Haruto has managed to move into Shiba’s apartment and, with his skills as a con man, obtains information that helps Shiba win his cases.

Much of the humor in the series is built on the contrast between Shiba’s uptightness and Haruto’s lack of inhibition. In one episode, Haruto convinces Shiba to go with him to a spa for a “hot and spicy weekend.” The sexually inexperienced Shiba is terrified.

When Shiba and Haruto become a loving couple, the show settles into a domestic pattern that must be common in Japanese culture. Shiba, the primary breadwinner, comes home to Haruto’s beautifully cooked dinners. Gay couples are legible to Japanese audiences if one man takes the woman’s role.

In the charming series, What Did You Eat Yesterday (not yet available in the US), Shiro, a lawyer, comes home every day to cook a sumptuous meal for his partner Kenji, a hairdresser. The food seems to be the most important bond. When after years together, Shiro brings Kenji to meet his parents, the older couple are obsessed with finding out who is the man and who is the woman in the relationship.

The first season of Love Is a Poison follows the formula of romantic comedy. Shiba and Haruto bicker with each other but are obviously smitten. Boy meets boy, boy loses boy, but the couple declare their love in the last episode. Season two take a more melodramatic turn after Haruto’s evil father enters the scene. Still, the most entertaining moments are the most romantic ones.

There is excellent chemistry between Shogo Hama and Katsumi Hyado, the actors playing Shiba and Haruto. They play comedy well together and are convincing as two men strongly attracted to each other. While there is no political discussion of gay marriage (illegal in Japan), the couple wear wedding rings and clearly see themselves as married. The sex is very carefully presented. We are supposed to believe that these men are in love and share a bed, but don’t have sex for months. 

When I watched Love Is a Poison, I thought, “Hmm, a Japanese gay series. Interesting.” Then I discovered that Love Is a Poison is one of hundreds of examples of BL (Boy Love), that are produced all over Asia. A friend suggested that I subscribe to Viki, a series that specializes in Asian romantic films and series including BL. From there I found GaGaOOLala, a similar site. The conventions these series fascinated me. To some extent, they are adaptations of the conventions of heterosexual romcoms: two people who initially don’t get along fall in love, face a crisis in their relationship and are reunited. As I delved further into these series, I discovered that Boy Love series (what they are called in Asia) are extremely popular and that their target audience is young heterosexual women. And gay men, of course.

Boy Love began early in this century as a popular manga genre in Japan. It was inevitable that the television and film industry would take advantage of the popularity of the genre. The genre quickly spread to Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, and, surprisingly, mainland China, which produces some of the best series. Sometimes a popular Japanese series will be adapted for one or more of the other countries.

A lot of scholarly work has been produced on why Boy Love stories are so popular with Asian women. Somehow watching good-looking, sensitive (sometimes downright weepy) men in romantic relationships appeals to young Asian women as much, if not more, than heterosexual romances. Early in my career, I was interested in how gay men could read themselves into heterosexual romance. I would have to be more of an expert in Asian culture to understand how straight women enjoy reading themselves into gay romance. 

What do these series offer Western gay men? Well, if you, like me, find Asian men attractive, there is much male pulchritude and, if you like romantic comedies and dramas, they offer the kind of somewhat innocent romance that used to the stock in trade of 1950s Hollywood films. The sex is usually confined to kissing and some shirtless embracing. I have only encountered one series that went beyond that. 

The plot lines in these series are very similar and fall into specific genres. I couldn’t get interested in the many schoolboy romances that are available. We now have European versions of these in the highly successful Netflix series Young Royals (Sweden) and Heartstoppers (UK), and a glossy, high-budget American version with Prime’s Red, White and Royal Blue. I’ll deal with the wildly successful Canadian series Heated Rivalry in a separate blog.

From watching a few of the many office romance BL series, I can see that BL series and films have quite rigid formulae. While both leads are very good-looking, one of the two leading characters seems more androgynous than the other; usually more boyish looking and more emotional. The other is likely to be a bit older, taller, more emotionally mature, and in a superior position to his partner (his boss or the more popular, more athletic kid at school). One tends to be gregarious, the other more of a loner. One tends to be secure; the other less so. One tends to be more aggressive. One tends to be from a wealthy background; the other poor or middle-class. What is odd in the series with men in their twenties or thirties is that at least one of the couple is often sexually inexperienced. Often one has never thought about his sexual orientation before. Talking about their feelings is a crucial part of the relationships. These are sensitive men often negotiating their first love.

I couldn’t help but notice echoes of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in many BL series. A sensitive young man finds himself drawn to a taciturn, slightly older man. The older man has great difficulty expressing his feelings. As a result, he seems cold. The younger man understandably has difficult reading the signals the other man is trying to send.

A number of the adult series are workplace romances. The most successful is the Japanese comic series Ossan’s Love (Viki), about Haruta, a thirty-three year old real estate salesman who discovers that both his middle-aged, married boss and his co-worker Maki are in love with him. First presented as a one-hour drama in 2016, the characters and situation were so popular that a series was presented in 2018, followed by a feature-film sequel in 2019. Shortly after that, a new series moved the characters out of the real estate office and into an airport. Haruta became a flight attendant avoiding the advances of the pilot. In 2024, a new series was produced with Haruta back in the real estate office. Later a Hong Kong version and a Thai version were produced.

Haruta caught between his boyfriend and his doting boss on Ossan’s Love

There is romance in Ossan’s Love, but much of the success of the series can be attributed to the comic talents of the cast. The show is a combination of romance and slapstick sitcom. Tanaka Kei, who plays Haruta, is a gifted clown, a male Lucille Ball. Haruta may be thirty-three, but Tanaka plays him as if he were a child. Both Yoshida Kotaro, who plays his lovesick boss, and Kento Hayasi, who plays Maki, Haruto’s boyfriend, are also superb comics. Some of the slapstick battles between the jealous Maki and the doting boss are hilarious.

The viewer has to accept the notion that Haruta is a thirty-three-year-old virgin who has never thought about the possibility of loving another man (or, it seems, a woman). His conversion happens, as is usually the case in Japanese BL dramas, with no discussion of sexual orientation. You also have to get past all you have thought about sexual harassment in the workplace in order to be amused by the boss’s schemes to attract Haruta. Ossan’s Love lives in a fantasy world where nothing needs to be taken seriously.  

The Korean series, The New Employee is more typical of BL office romances. Fresh from a graduate degree in management, Seung Hyun starts a job as an intern for an advertising agency. He is good-looking and charming, but in his mid-twenties and still a virgin, whose only romantic experience is an unrequited crush at university. His boss, Kim Jong Chan, is a total workaholic with little in the way of social skills. Although he brings in 50% of the agency’s profits, his aloof attitude has made him many enemies at the firm. Kim quickly sees that his young intern has the kind of brilliant new ideas he needs. He also quickly becomes enamored of his cute young assistant. Seung Hyun is friendly with two young women in the office but he only has eyes for his boss.

The boss and his intern in The New Employee

Seung knows he is gay—he even belonged to the lesbian-gay alliance at university—but the romance with his boss is his first real relationship. The innocence of at least one of the lovers is always part of these romances. So is the age difference between boss and his assistant, although the boss doesn’t seem much older.

Here, as in other series, the new romance is a rekindling of an adolescent romance. First love, even when unrequited, is the only true love. The Japanese series, Tokyo in April Is… is an even more intense version of the story of a reunion of adolescent lovers who were separated. After a forced separation when they were fifteen, and years abroad, Kazuma gets a job at an advertising agency where Ren is the head designer. As is the case in many iterations of the genre, one of the couple has great difficulty expressing his feelings. Older people (corrupt management, harsh parents) keep creating crises for the couple.

The creepiest of the BL workplace series is the Taiwanese production, You Are Mine. The formula is the same. A cute young man from humble origins becomes secretary to the General Manager (and President’s son) of a large corporation. The secretary is sweet, outgoing, naïve; his boss is demanding, temperamental, moody, withdrawn. He’s also handsome (everyone is good-looking on BL series). When the boss becomes attracted to his cute secretary, he becomes downright unprofessional. The young secretary is justifiably baffled and frightened by his boss’s advances. He knows the boss is attracted to him but thinks his intentions are less than honorable. He also is aware of the class difference and can’t imagine why the boss is so obsessively infatuated with him. When he tries to resign, the boss invokes a non-existent clause in his contract which makes resignation impossible. The boss is totally, obsessively smitten, but handles it in the most awkward way possible. The series makes it impossible for the viewer to have any sympathy for him. This is a BL series, which means that love, even weird obsessive love, wins out in the end.

Obsessive love Chinese style in To My Shore

To My Shore from mainland China, the best written and best acted series I have encountered, takes weird, obsessive love to violent extremes. You Shu Lang, a manager at a pharmaceutical company, accidentally rear ends the fancy car owned by Fan Xiao, an executive at a crooked conglomerate. Both men suffered awful childhood trauma. While You Shu Lang has built up a kind, competent persona, he seems to be emotionally blocked. Fan Xiao has become a ruthless monster who distrusts any sign of goodness. Circumstances bring the two men together a second time in a hospital where You Shu Lan enlists Fan Xiao’s help in saving a baby. Fan Xiao, becomes obsessed with hurting You Shu Lang, first by trying to steal his boyfriend, then by seducing him into a perverse, controlling relationship. While his goal seems to be to destroy You, he finds that he is falling in love with him, which makes him even more obsessive and controlling. The early episodes trace a warped love-hate story that ends in prison for Fan Xiao and the need to start life and career all over again for You. When Fan Xiao gets out of prison, he tries to become a kind of guardian angel for You Shu Lang. Can their destructive love turn into something positive?

This is Emily Bronte or Patricia Highsmith territory, but the writing, based on a novel, is a cut above most series, and the acting of veteran Hao Yi Ran and debutant Yun Qi is excellent. The emotions here, as in many BL series—are operatic. Actors Hao and Yun balance the heightened emotions with enough of a sense of realism to maintain sufficient credibility. The series has been so successful that at least one more bonus episode is in the works. The stars have become internet celebrities.

Maybe I, an opera queen of the first order, am drawn to BL series because they are so operatic. The emotions are either repressed or taken to extremes. The acting is somewhat stylized. The stories are about the discovery of powerful desire and the possibility of true love between two men who discover their sensitive side. In the charming Japanese series Old Fashioned Cupcake, a lonely, repressed thirty-nine-year-old executive and his twenty-nine-year-old subordinate see women chatting amiably in a café and decide they will pretend to be women so that they will share confidences and feelings. As men, they cannot do that. Every weekend, they go to a dessert place frequented by women. Eventually, they realize that they have strong feelings for each other. Through role-playing as women, they learn to express those feelings. And, as there has to be in Japanese series, there is the ritual of sharing food together. Maybe what women see in these series are men who can express their emotions more fully than the men in their lives. What we gay men see are love stories between beautiful men and affirmations of male-male love, all with a “forever after” happy ending.

Learning emotional freedom from the ladies in Old Fashioned Cupcake