BE-BOY KIDNAPP`N IDOL

DESCRIPTION

CAST

REVIEWS

• 

  ampersandra

  85/100
  Decent balance between a knows-it cheesy plot & a genuine-feeling main bond, with fun music too

  Short and sweet. I loved the soundtrack of 80's J-pop, which also fit the story. For a 26 minute (less, really it's about 20) OVA, the main characters and their central relationship felt really natural and charming. Just as much depth as you need for something this long. The early scenes do a good job at setting up the characters and their dynamic, and subsequent scenes keep their personalities distinct without reducing them to entirely flat traits & tropes. I love characters who've been friends for a long time, but it's easier on some levels to introduce characters who are new to each other AND the audience. They manage to avoid the common issue of having characters (who already know each other) just state personality traits or backstory out loud to each other unnaturally. For example, the dreaded "As you know, I like/hate [X]." or "You're always doing [Y]."

  Nozomu Sasaki's voice acting made Kazuya especially fun to watch, although Akihiko's voice also grew on me and I think Takeshi Kusao did a fine job. It wasn't what I was expecting for his type of character, but it felt more natural as time went on. The art style was appealing and the animation wasn't bad either, though I'm not the best critic for that aspect. Some moments were surprisingly fluid, and there were only a couple times (mainly when Kazuya was performing) when they defaulted to the pan & zoom over still images.

  I didn't have any problems with the pacing, and the story was fine. It didn't blow my mind, but I'm a sucker for stories that expect you to just go along with their wack internal logic or justifications, so I did get a kick out of there apparently being an agency that regularly kidnaps promising talents (who already have agents??) and forces them to sign a contract (twhich may not even be a bad or abusive contract always) then drops them after a year (makes zero sense profit-wise and if it is an abusive contract then it doesn't even ruin their career for that long), AND this being a thing that they've done enough that people KNOW about it??? And somehow they can still get away with it anyway? I love it.

  The tone stayed light, which worked for me, even during the villain's attempted sexual assault of Kazuya (which I want to mention here as a warning, for those who may want to avoid even the implication or possibility). I was already approaching this OVA with the mindset that there would probably be some tropes I usually try to avoid, since they're pretty much ubiquitous to older works in the BL genre, so one scene with the villain being the extent of it exceeded my expectations. Here, it's more like they toss the threat in with a wink and a grin so you know it won't get that serious, while still giving our protags some higher stakes to overcome before finishing their story.

  The sequence with Akihiko escaping to save Kazuya set to a pop song startled a delighted laugh from me when it started. Instead of epic climactic music, there was fun upbeat 80's J-pop, and I realized I didn't know why I would've expected anything different. I just thought "That's so fun. I'm having fun. Go save your man!!!" and I felt like I really understood the people who had fun making this and wanted me to have fun watching it, too.

  In some ways, it feels like this could've been made less than a decade ago, instead of three and a half. I'm not promising a life-changing-ly deep experience or even saying it'll work for everyone, but it's worth giving a chance. Worst case scenario, you've wasted 20 minutes, which you could do in much worse and less interesting ways anyway. Personally, I'm gonna be introducing this to as many of my friends that I can convince for the next couple weeks in the hopes it lands for even one of them the way it did for me.

  Also I really really liked it when the villain who let Akihiko go said "Love Rider" in English near the end. A perfect cheesy note to end on.

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