BL Lesson: Yukinojou-san niwa Sakaraenai

Young actor Kousei has an upcoming role in a drama and requests additional material from his manager to prepare for the BL role. Sakurai Yukinojou, a famous person in BL theater world suddenly shows up at his doorstep, and agrees to give him lessons in BL.

I don't usually sub vertical dramas but since this one has really nice music and Shunsuke, I just had to sub it. I started subbing it quite a while back, so I'm glad I got to finish it now. I wish the ending was a bit better, but there were lots of cute and funny scenes that I appreciate. There were several challenges I faced when subbing it:

• how to highlight the concept of keigo (polite language) - you can see in the subs I tried to contrast it in some lines, and some lines I just gave up because it'd feel unnatural and weird
• how to deal with the many scene transitions - the subs may not be frame-perfect, but thanks to this drama, I figured out a good way to time lines better next time
• how to shorten the lines so the text doesn't cover up the entire screen, and the subs are still readable
• how to creatively sub the lines, so they make sense since it might not be so obvious, especially with fragmented lines
• how to sub the whole section with Kiba... Let's say, I could go full-on lewd, but I chose not to on purpose. Also, there's this one line I cannot fully understand no matter how much I think about it. I get the sexual context of it, but it's still very weird to me Japanese-wise. 

Cast (romanization for actors based on the official actor profiles for searchability, for characters same as my usual style):

• Nishikawa Shunsuke as Nagasawa Kousei (Kousei's name literally means "shining/bright star" which I thought was a nice touch)
• Domiki Akira as Sakurai Yukinojou
• Fujioka Noriko as Sano Honami (Kousei's manager)
• Yoshida Takeshi as Kiba Yoshihiro
• Azumi Keitaro as company president

Direction: Kawano Koji

January 2026 is actually the month of my fourth year subbing anniversary! Expect more queer stuff coming this month. I can't believe how time flies. Thank you for sticking around if you've been with me since the start. I've learned a lot in these past four years. My subs were initially quite tragic, so I'm glad I managed to fix two projects at least. Hopefully I can rework some other past projects in the future.  

Lastly, I wish everyone all the best in the year 2026 <3 Hope you enjoy this short vertical drama (btw this is all 30 episodes merged into one)