the chameleon reviews

1. Because This is my First Life 

k-drama, 16 episodes, each 1 hour long

So sensitively and personally written. I was sucked into the storytelling and felt as though I was seeing these scenes through the eyes of the characters. Bravo to the scriptwriter; as I was watching it I felt, ah, she must have drawn from some intensely personal and important place. It was not a story anyone could have written. Because This is My First Life follows the stories of three BFFs as they experience, and grapple with, love and marriage. It does not shy away from the complicated sides of these issues - the societal, monetary and financial pressures that love and marriage cannot be separated from, the difficulties of communicating with others honestly yet sensitively. There are some frustratingly incorrigible people in the drama (like sexually harassing superiors), but most of the time the conflicts play out between good people who care for and support each other, yet inevitably butt heads because they have different - and equally valid - views of life. Is it wrong to want to marry and start a family? Is it wrong not to? It was painful at times, I think I cried for some of the characters. Not because they were pitiable, but because sometimes in life there is no right or wrong; you have to make tough choices and it hurts but you have to keep your eyes open and keep watching; keep walking. For the literature lovers out there, especially those who might be sick of gratuitous (often cheesy) quotes inserted randomly into dramas, well, good for you! Characters in Because This is My First Life read and are impacted by (real life) books, and you can see how the books they’ve read influence the way they think, act, and communicate with each other. It’s very realistic and mirrors the way you might consume and digest books in your own life outside of the drama. Oh, the PPL is also wonderfully done and actually contributes to character building.  8-9/10.

2. Raise de wa Chanto Shimasu (I’ll be serious in my next life)

j-drama, 12 episodes, each 1/2 an hour long

One woman, five sex friends. I know. I know it sounds messy and melodramatic and angsty. I hesitated for the same reasons as well. But when I finally got over it and watched the damn thing (very bingeable, totalling at only 6 hours), I regretted not watching it sooner. Raise wa Chanto Shimasu is a breath of fresh air. Most of the characters, whether hypersexual or asexual, are pretty unabashed about it, and I love their self-love. Want to have sex? Go for it, gurl. Don’t want to have sex? Also no problem. The title is an apt one and showcases this message of acceptance. We might have bones to pick with our current lifestyles, but welp, we’ll just be serious in our next lives. As one of the characters said at the end, “we all became independent, working adults, I think we should be proud of ourselves”.  Much needed affirmation in a world of moralising, slut-shaming, virgin-mocking, and expectations to get married and settle down.

Warning: one of the characters in a bi/gay relationship is pretty vocal in denying his sexuality even in front of his partner, and a trans woman was harrassed at one point. These were discomfiting for me. 

3. The Fiery Priest 

k-drama, 40 episodes, each 1/2 an hour long (or 20 hour-long episodes)

Action. Comedy. Kim Nam Gil, who won the Baeksang for this role. Honey Lee. Badass babe. Ahn Chang Hwan, who was so realistic at playing a Thai immigrant my friend who studied Korean for three years didn’t even realise he was Korean. Father Han. One reviewer said he was a literal angel, and I concur. Most dramas leave you with at most three or four characters you really like; this drama makes you fall in love with the whole gang. Everyone has a backstory, or some hidden side that you didn’t expect that just adds so much more dimension when revealed. Where some might find it hard to balance the weight of action and the levity of comedy, dipping too deeply into angst or farce at times, The Fiery Priest manages the tone really well even as the plot deepens and our characters have to deal with deep-seated traumas. I have nothing more to say to promote this drama except, how could you pass on Kim Nam Gil doing action plus comedy MINUS tragedy and the moustache? 

A final note: Technically, The Fiery Priest is a stronger drama than Raise and should deserve the no. 2 spot. The former deals with bigger issues like corruption, morality and forgiveness, while the latter is more light-hearted and deals almost entirely with personal choices. However, some issues Raise touched on were really important to me and came at a time when I really needed affirmation to believe in my beliefs, so it edged out The Fiery Priest in my heart. 

4. 传闻中的陈芊芊 (The Romance of Tiger and Rose) 

c-drama, 22 episodes, each about 45 minutes long

甜。This drama is just Sweet with a capital S. What a refreshing watch, especially for women. I loved not having tugging battles between two men. I loved the respect given to consent. I loved having so many smart and capable women who have conversations with each other that do not revolve around men. I love how the male lead wasn’t hung up on Male Ego and gave his wife space to be herself and make her own decisions and mistakes. A rare gem. I’m sure I will revisit this when I’m tired of the usual ドキドキ tactics involving possession and pulling around 

(If you can read Chinese, I suggest watching it on the 腾讯视频 app with 弹幕 on. I found it pretty hilarious, meaning I laugh-cried so hard in the middle of the night my neighbour knocked on my door to ask if I was ok.)   

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

A quick rundown of the dramas and films I’ve watched so far in 2020 so you know the pool I picked these four from: 

Annabelle Thong by Imran Hashim

The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief

It was so honest I was surprised; I think even the director was surprised. Yet this honesty is simultaneously dishonest - It’s complicated and very human, and to be honest I’m not sure if the interviewees even know whether they are telling the truth, or merely repeating from some internalised, agreed-upon narrative. 

The documentary is built on interviews of several hosts and their customers, interspersed with footage of actual hosting. I liked how much coverage the customers got, so you get more sides of the story. As the documentary unfolds, the interviewees start to contradict themselves or reveal the undersides of what appears pleasant at the outset. Extremely poignant, for example, is a moment near the end of the documentary when Issei, host extraordinaire and owner of the featured host café, says they have to prevent their customers from waking up from the dream. Suddenly what he says at the start about them taking girls to a dream world, selling them a “Dream”, sounds less dreamy and more insidious. 

~~~~~~~~~~ other eye-opening articles ~~~~~~~~~~

Ministry of Moral Panic by Amanda Lee Koe

It’s 8 May today; I’ve left the review for a few days because I wanted my thoughts on this book to percolate. For some reason reading Ministry of Moral Panic was emotionally tiring for me. Given the title, I can see how the stories would involve or set out to trigger moral panic. Their conflicts often involve deviants from the unspoken celibate, high-flying, Singaporean norms involving marrying off old maids and marriages of compatibility. The stories are probably meant to provoke, but ironically it was the lighter stories (less sensational, less deviant) that I enjoyed more. I started to expect the scandalous and the societally frowned upon in every short story, before I had even read them. It is partially a fault of my own, but I felt that I was racing ahead of myself and thus couldn’t appreciate the stories as I could have if I had encountered them individually (I was more blown away by “Pawn” when I read it independently on QLRS than in this collection). However, the way Amanda Lee Koe structures her stories does deliciously provide hints to what she wants to say. 

In “Pawn” for example, the main “couple” seem to play a zero-sum game. He cheats her, or he loves her; she loses, or she wins. However, by bookending the story with juxtapositions against prettier office ladies, Amanda Lee Koe shows us that the game was never played between the couple, but between the pretty office ladies and those who aren’t considered so. It’s presented as a surprising twist, but one realises it’s been there all along. 

Kappa Quartet by Daryl Qilin Yam

It’s 9 am and I’ve just finished Kappa Quartet. I’m not sure what I think about it, because I’d always thought it would end cheerily. Slightly past the midpoint mark last night I noted: “The story grows on you. The characters come together in greater numbers and more frequently, and they meld together like members taking position in a symphonic orchestra.” In some senses the ends of some characters reflected their sad situations in life - sometimes something had to give, like in the trio’s case. There was quite a lot of irony, and sometimes there is the sense of people missing out on deeper conversations because they politely held back on pushing topics - like in the case of Mr Shimao and Ahab. Daryl weaves in quite a bit of detail in various places - dates and names that I miss because I’m still a skimming reader. This is a very vague and sparse review, I must say. 

In the earlier bits of the story I felt like some lines were dropped because they sounded poetic, the kind of line you wave your hand about and try to grab from the air and say wistfully. Perhaps because some of them didn’t strike me as being specific to the situation. They were apt, but they didn’t seem solely applicable to whatever was being talked about. A friend once said something about a Naomi Kawase movie about a town, that Kawase doesn’t explicitly state things. She shows them for a while, and if you haven’t gotten it by then she just moves on. Given the structure of Kappa Quartet, with each chapter narrated from the POV of a different character, and the characters featured dependent on the experiences of the narrator, readers are not made aware of the fates of all characters. We only know of what happened in the end to three out of the many characters, and while I was surprised at how the novel narrowed to a point in its conclusion given its number of characters, I wasn’t displeased by it because I had accepted by this point that Kappa Quartet wasn’t going to be the sunshine and roses story I assumed it would be. 

Man, what a lot of rambling on my part. Quick notes: 

There was a point where I thought that though humans do not have the cavities in their skulls Kappas have, quite a few human characters had deficiencies reminscent of those holes. 

Also, I noticed myself fearing Kappas “turning rogue” or causing trouble, or being the cause of trouble in some sense, which made me examine this form of xenophobia in me. 

~~~~~~~~~ more material below ~~~~~~~~

We Rose Up Slowly by Jon Gresham

Great book. A collection of speculative short stories, some of them reworking legends and real events. My favourite was “Rashid at The Sail”, simply because I liked the bit of optimism in it. My least favourite is “Walking Backwards Up Bukit Timah Hill”, because I felt it was too strange, yet not strange enough to be mindblowing. 

And on the topic of “strangeness”, it’s a pity, but perhaps because the book starts with the memorably unquotidian “We Rose Up Slowly”, I found myself expecting some unnatural element in the following stories. This expectation impeded my immersion into some stories, because I was always looking out for something else. Nevertheless, this is a small gripe and wouldn’t be a problem if the reader encountered these stories separately - as they would have been when first published in various different collections. 

Other People’s Cats - my favourite line is “I am not your manic pixie dream girl.”

A Fleeting Tenderness at the End of Night - the first time I read this I was vaguely disatisfied. I felt that though some expressions were clever - the shit on streets/ don’t shit on me twist of stereotypes, some lines of direct speech - “let me protect you in my cocoon, inside my spaceship. Let us fly through the night together” - verged on the artificial and wouldn’t be said irl. Unexpectedly, I found it thoughtful and charming upon my second read. True, the cringey lines are still cringey, but writing is a craft, and it’s plain that the author took pains to subtly weave in “clues” to the conclusion. I didn’t catch those on my first read, and catching them on my second was a pleasant glimpse into another dimension of the story. I also picked up more mirroring of speech/actions that (again, subtly) showed that the first person narrative of one character was based on misunderstanding and was flawed. Given the suspension of belief one has when viewing fiction, I hadn’t realised that on my first read. 

Final verdict: 

Definitely worth re-reading. I’m considering buying a copy and bringing it to China as a Sing Lit rec. 

Post-script: 

The sensuous descriptions are quite tingly - “soft as a vole”. Whoosh. 

~~ read the following after you’ve read the book ~~

Noon at Five O’Clock by Arthur Yap

My favourite short story is the eponymous “Noon at Five O’Clock”, for rather personal reasons - I liked and related to the pretensions of the main character more than the concerns of the others. “Story of a Mask” was well-crafted but it was spoilt by my having read “A Silly Little Story” just before, since some lines were recycled. The recyling might be charming for some, but I’m not good with such similarities because I’ll keep thinking of the other piece and be distracted from the present one. My second most favourite story is “None the Wiser”, because of its symbolism (the curtain sash), and the rest can be left unranked. 

Tweet by Isa Kamari

Highly allegorical and rife with religious allusions (had to add that alliteration there). Might be too... blunt for some; I felt that quite a lot of allusions would be quite apparent to readers aware of recent debates in Singapore society, skirting the line between praise and criticism of LKY’s government till I’m not sure if it’s a tribute or a satirical problem piece, or both... Nevertheless, it is a bold publish, I felt that notes could have been added at the back to point out allusions to foreign readers, if that wouldn’t make Tweet too explicitly critical or provocative. 

Still, it is a very short story and the writing remains readable. Re-reading is possible. 

Itazura na Kiss (1996)

A waste of time, which is a pity given its promising start. Everyone and everything seemed more rational - the Aihara house burnt down instead of fallen by a meteor or an earthquake; Irie Naoki more considerate, actually clarifying matters when Kotoko was accused unfairly; Kotoko actually momentarily skeptical of Irie Mama’s optimistic delusions... I thought the development between the otp would even be more gradual and natural, given the many silent concerned glances Naoki sent Kotoko. 

While the Love in Tokyo version is quite loyal, this version deviates quite liberally from the original manga. This was ok/good for the first few episodes, but it was ultimately a pity because the manga had a lot of arcs that could have been “mined” for development instead of what were ultimately chosen as substitutes.The 1996 version is already a short one, spanning only 9 45-minute episodes. One episode was frustratingly useless - the penultimate Christmas one devoid of sweet moments between our otp. Naoki and Kotoko’s Christmas celebration is a memorable moment in the manga, and is evidence of Naoki’s turning towards Kotoko. Given that it falls in the second last episode here, when things should presumably start being wrapped up and build towards the happy ending, the addition of more negativity and confusion just seemed poorly planned. 

Another confusing addition was an old love line between Aihara papa and Irie mama. The creators did try to draw a parallel between Kotoko and Irie mama, suggesting that viewers are supposed to compare Irie mama and her relationships with Kotoko and her relationship with Naoki. However, this comparison never came through and the old love line is never resolved. It made the Aiharas’ continued stay take on touches of the despicable, and gave credit to Irie Naoki’s complaints of his mother biasing the Aihara family, complaints which he was chastised for “not seeing others’ love for him” over. 

In contrast to Naoki’s more sympathetic portrayal, Kotoko is drawn less likeably. She is less kind to others like Kin-chan, ignoring him even when he turns up bruised and bloodied fending off thugs trying to waylay her - the same thugs she had criticised Naoki for not saving her from previously. Throughout the episodes, Kotoko becomes increasingly unaware of the people around her, becoming merely one word - LOUD. This is to the point where Naoki seems almost scared of her, her noise and her ubiquity.