Queer love takes many forms on screen, from the twee innocence of Heartstopper to the bump and grind of Heated Rivalry. A new gay romance on Netflix called Soul Mate recently took yet another approach, tenderly following the bond that forms between two men across Berlin, Seoul, and Tokyo over the course of 10 years.
However, how that connection is defined remains somewhat ambiguous.
Ryu Narutaki (Hayato Isomura) and Johan Hwang (Ok Taec-yeon) first meet in a Berlin church that’s just been set ablaze, yet the connection that ensues is much more of a slow-burn.
Despite saving Ryu from the fire, Johan is initially resistant to forming a friendship. It’s not until the pair accidentally meet again that they end up becoming something more.
Across the decade that follows, the two men visit each other in Seoul and Tokyo, growing closer and closer until Johan ends up moving in with Ryu. Together, they form a unique family of sorts when Ryu’s childhood friend Sumiko Shinonome (Ai Hashimoto) joins them soon after with her baby.
Get personalised updates on all things Netflix
Wake up to find news on your TV shows in your inbox every morning with Metro’s TV Newsletter.
Sign up to our newsletter and then select your show in the link we’ll send you so we can get TV news tailored to you.
Soul Mate is incredibly moving in how it explores themes of displacement and connection across multiple cities and cultures. Drawing on the calmness often associated with Japanese slice-of-life dramas, writer/director Shunki Hashizume gradually teases out something touching and even beautiful between Ryu and Johan until melodrama overtakes the story’s conclusion.
What’s not as beautiful, however, is the show’s reluctance to depict this brash Korean boxer and sweet Japanese ice hockey star as anything more than friends. Or at least, not until the very last moments of their journey.
That’s not to say these two men don’t love each other. From the moment Johan shows up in Japan to surprise Ryu, it’s clear that there’s something much deeper here than friendship, and that feeling only intensifies as the story continues.
Four episodes in, there’s a scene where the two men scrub each other’s backs while sitting nude together in the sauna. Did I scream ‘kiss!’ at my screen as they casually chatted about their lives? Sure, I did.
Japanese cultural norms aside, it’s important to note that this naked rendezvous occurs just one episode after Johan drew a picture of Ryu while he was sleeping. Sounds pretty gay, right? Not long after, the pair decide to help Sumiko raise her baby together in a shared household, even applying to become the child’s official guardians.
On paper, this all reads as a ‘Gay Romance,’ just like how Variety described the show upon its initial announcement. But taken within the context of the series itself, you’d be forgiven for wondering if the pair might even be in love at all.
Not once do Ryu and Johan share physical intimacy of any kind, and there’s no declaration of their feelings for each other until the very end. If you wanted to, you could even make a case that these two men are just friends who share a deep connection, who love each other in a platonic sense.
To do so would be wilfully ignorant, though. Queer people are used to reading between the lines in order to see ourselves on screen, and it’s important to remember that gay romance doesn’t need cute hearts drawn on screen or locker room hookups to make it gay. Soul Mate is queer, deliberately so, yet what also feels deliberate is how Hashizume skirts around this to an infuriating degree.
The emotional weight of what unfolds between Ryu and Johan depends almost entirely on their love being romantic (if unrequited), yet the portrayal of this is decidedly platonic, more bromance than romance. Without any sense of interiority, no feeling of what these characters are going through beneath the surface, their connection remains frustratingly vague, as elusive as the years which slip by so fast.
This isn’t the first time that a Japanese romance has avoided going all the way with a kiss or something comparable between its two male leads. Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard is a notorious example of that from 2020.
In fact, Japanese media in general is famously coy in this regard, especially when it comes to physical intimacy, and that’s especially true of queer love on screen. Yet such intimacy does exist still, even if it’s toned down in comparison to similar offerings in the West.
You only have to look at the recent success of other Japanese Netflix ventures like last year’s 10Dance movie, which included a full-blown makeout sesh, or even The Boyfriend, an adorable dating show, to see that Soul Mate could have also been progressive in a similar vein.
What’s even more frustrating is that there are actually references to queerness throughout Soul Mate, so it’s not like it’s been scrubbed out of the story completely. Ryu is driven to that church at the beginning precisely because of the guilt he feels after what happens after his gay teammate Arata comes out to him. Little is done to unpack this after and how it impacts Ryu’s own feelings towards Johan.
Johan also encounters queerness somewhat separate to him when his favourite bar, which it later turns out is gay, gets attacked by homophobes. The words ‘Gay bastard’ are even painted across Johan’s front door in the aftermath, yet we never hear how he feels about this firsthand. Obviously, it’s traumatic, and Johan’s behaviour certainly speaks to this afterwards, but it feels like a scene is missing somehow, something that speaks to his inner world in relation to this.
Bringing up gay themes in relation to other characters without addressing the central pair creates a bizarre disconnect. Ryu and Johan never show romantic interest in any other character, and they never really show that kind of interest in each other, too. Could they be asexual? Possibly, but that’s never discussed or hinted at either.
It’s as if someone has gone in and cut out every scene of intimacy between the pair, spoken or physical, while keeping the rest of the story intact, with the boys living together and so forth. The result feels hollow, despite the best efforts of Isomura and Taec-yeon, who do remarkable work with the material they’re given. Perhaps it would have been better to make this more explicitly a bromance rather than this liminal, in-between story of ‘soul mates,’ whatever that might mean.
When asked about the true nature of that connection by Teen Vogue, Taec-yeon said: ‘It’s not about being physical,’ explaining how the story ‘shows very different varieties of how love can be expressed’.
‘There are a lot of LGBTQ+ shows in the world,’ added Isomura, ‘ a lot of depictions being more affectionate, like having a kiss scene or a love scene, but we don’t have that. It’s more about their emotional connection. I feel that it’s a very new way of capturing a relationship between two people.’
That in itself should not be an issue because love and queerness are fluid by their very nature. Why should Soul Mate pin down such a unique connection with labels? The problem is when it feels like elements that could be interpreted as more explicitly queer are actively avoided. While accusations of queerbaiting might be a step too far, it does feel like Soul Mate is hesitant to reckon with the true nature of the feelings involved.
For some viewers, that won’t matter, though. Queer audiences are more than accustomed to reading between the lines, especially in countries like Japan or South Korea, where same-sex marriage remains out of reach. Plus, the story is still moving regardless, brought to life with production values that are just as stunning as the two men at its centre.
It’s also worth noting that Japanese and Korean men sharing affection of any kind on screen like this is progressive in its own way, regardless of expectations around this show specifically. But at a time when BL (Boys Love) is on the rise globally and other Japanese Netflix ventures have been celebrating queerness more openly, Soul Mate could certainly have gone further to emphasise the queer feelings that underpin this soul mate connection.
That final declaration of love at the end, as effective as it might be, isn’t enough to undo the issues that preceded it. Because yes, queer love does take many forms on screen, and soul mates are certainly part of that, but the soul mates in question shouldn’t be so vague and ambiguous in the first place.
Soul Mate is available to watch on Netflix.
Got a story?
If you’ve got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the Metro.co.uk entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@metro.co.uk, calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we’d love to hear from you.