Is The Stranger by the Shore the Perfect BL Movie? – This Week in Anime

Shun and Mio meet one fateful day, but just as soon as they enter one another’s lives, they separate. Jean-Karlo and Nick check out the second of Blue Lynx’s BL films and find an emotionally honest narrative about two young men trying to find happiness.

This movie is streaming on Funimation.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.
Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.

Nick

Well Jean-Karlo, we had such a fun time last week, I figure we might as well press our luck and try for two on late Pride Month topics. Though for the sake of our editor’s nerves we should probably choose something with less on-screen fellatio. You have any ideas?

Jean-Karlo

Um…. off-screen fellatio?


Or we could just eat crab.

I dunno, are you SHORE? Seems like a STRANGE proposition to m—

Don’t worry team, while there’s some mildly NSFW parts to this hour-long BL manga adaptation, it’s a much smaller piece of the puzzle this time. By which I mean nobody gets DP’d in this one. Unless DP stands for DePression!

Why focus on depression when you can focus on deez cats?

Oh we will talk about the Gay Symbolism Cats plenty, believe me.


But first, we should probably talk about characters who actually talk in this movie. First is Shun, an early twenty-something novelist who really, really needs a nap.

Shun’s character arc is the crux of the movie. Like, if I tell you that his movie is about Shun dealing with his attraction to the other protagonist, Mio, and how he’s scared of it because of how Shun being gay strained his relationship with his family… I just spoiled the whole film. That’s Shun’s character arc in a nutshell. And it sounds like very little, but The Stranger by the Shore really does engross you in Shun’s growth, especially with how much Mio brings out the best in him.

Emphasis on pretty. This isn’t a powerhouse of animation but damn is it nice to just look at.

Also, the movie is set on an island. That’s one way to sucker me into liking a movie. Also, as it turns out, Mio was a mama’s boy.


We don’t know much about the relationship between Mio and his mother, but it was a very loving one and it becomes very easy to understand why her loss was so devastating to Mio at the beginning of the movie.

Dammit movie, you just had to get me with a Sad Mom story. You bastards.

Like we said, Mio starts the movie with his mother’s death having just happened. To Shun, Mio was the literal stranger by the sea. Shun tries getting close to Mio and finds he has to work at it, since Mio’s grief has made him kinda prickly to others around him.

Meeting Mio is also what kicks off a lot of Shun’s character growth. He’s sure he likes Mio, but he’s struggling with the idea that he might be gay, even though both he and his peers know there’s something different about him.

Well sort of—it’s more that this crush on Mio resurfaces a lot of feelings from when he did realize he’s gay. One thing this movie does have a bit of a problem with is temporal relativity. There’s a number of moments that are actually flashbacks, but it’s kind of hard to tell at first. Like this moment here had me thinking Shun was still in high school until I realized no, that’s his backstory, and he’s in his 20’s now.

This is the slowest fast movie I can think of, clocking in at just one hour. But like Nick said, none of it feels wasted.

It’s also the fastest slow movie, because after one awkward dinner and a heart to heart, these two say their goodbyes…


And then the next scene it’s three years later, Mio is back from the mainland, and he happily tells Shun he’s 20 so they can bang without any baggage. His words not mine.

So, I guess here’s where this movie’s writing gets a little messy, because once Mio returns Shun is suddenly reluctant to get close to him. And I suppose it’s because Shun struggling with his identity made him bail on a planned wedding his family had, which crumbled the relationship between Shun and his father?

Shun’s aunt owns the inn and adjoining restaurant, she’s evidently an awesome old lady.


But I guess the timeline for The Stranger by the Shore is a little confusing, courtesy of all the flashbacks. It’s easiest when we go to Mio as a kid, but Shun there doesn’t age much so it’s tougher to place his events.

Regardless of the exact timeline, Shun’s big issue is that he’s internalized his own sexuality as the reason for his isolation. Sure, he wants to be with Mio, but he also feels like he’s dragging somebody else into a life of being ostracized by getting close to him. The heteronormative microaggressions certainly don’t help.

What really caps this all off was how it was Shun who pushed so hard to get to close to Mio but then got cold feet once Mio turned out to be receptive.

To be fair Mio does come on a little strong. He’s got that overeager 20-year-old energy while Shun is firmly in his tired quarter-life crisis phase.

I’m not even sure what Shun does? Like, he’s an author, I think? He’s connected to a university, maybe?

He’s a novelist! Which means he does all his work two days after his deadline.

I’m not saying I’m thinking about what would happen if I sent my editor a drawing of a cat on a deadline. But I am implying it.

We can do it right now! Look at the kitties who are also convenient visual metaphors for our leads. Look it how precious they are.


So yeah, that’s the only major conflict for the first half of this film. Mio has spent the last three years working himself up to starting a relationship Shun feels abject guilt over sparking. It’s a relatively simple one to solve—they just have to actually talk to each other—but there’s a lot of neat details. Like how Mio first came to terms with his feelings by confiding in a local queer bar owner.

Between this owner and the aunt, this movie has so many side characters that are effortlessly charming. Like Shun’s ex-fiancée!


Oh, yeah, forgot to mention—Shun’s ex-fiancée/childhood friend comes by to try and drag him back to see his estranged dad. Whoops.


Also, I’m kinda surprised this lady woke up and decided she was gonna wear an outfit straight out of Columbo. Like, what year is it in this movie?

This is also the kind of girl who meets her ex’s new guy and immediately tells him what he’s like in the sack, so she goes by the beat of her own drum.

She’s also lying through her teeth, but it works out—Sakurako knows that Shun would never be happy with her, but she just wants him to be happy one way or another. Even if it means she misses out on him. So she’s willing to try and get the green-eyed monster to help do the heavy lifting.


And to her credit—it works!

It’s here we should note that part of what makes Mio charming is that this boy is an absolutely doofus. He’s a sweet doofus, but also he has three brain cells in his head and two of them are constantly thinking about holding hands, so this is the best plan he can come up with.

The last one is consumed with thoughts of his mom, but I digress.

Well sometimes it’s also consumed by Horny, much to Shun’s exhaustion.

Curiously, he’s the one who tops! I think that ultimately, Shun wanted someone to take care of him after years of denying himself and hiding his feelings. Which, hey man, get ya mans.

Yeah so I did lie a little about this being SFW earlier. There’s one (more or less) on screen sex scene as the climax—no, not that kind—to the film. But unlike Twittering Birds Never Fly, this one is framed as both romantic and deeply awkward.

Ultimately, Shun and Mio are a pair of lonely kids who don’t really know what they’re doing but feel safe in taking their first few steps in a very big world with each other by their side. And that’s about as good as it gets for folks in this world. Shun had to distance himself from his family, Mio still misses his departed mother on some level, but this kind of loneliness brings them together as people instead of embittering them.

And I like how this movie is able to make use of sex to tell that story. Like I vaguely recall some discourse about sex scenes being artistically unnecessary, but right here we get a remarkably honest, sweet, even funny conclusion to our main romance in a way that just couldn’t happen in a TV adaptation.


That’s the other thing—this movie can be really funny when it wants to be.

And like I said, it’s romantic too. If this is a fantasy, it’s one about being comfortable and trusting enough to be vulnerable and awkward and honest with somebody in about as intimate a way as possible, and it makes for a really nice capstone to this story.


In terms of both spiciness and romance, Stranger is definitely more my speed, so I’m glad it’s available for folks to check out. I hear there’s also a sequel manga, and I’m really curious to check that out at some point.

The Stranger by the Shore is a little sloppy in its execution, but its very genuine in its emotion and feels like a breath of fresh air. The beautiful visuals really help, I definitely recommend this to viewers. And hey, it’s only an hour, so even if it doesn’t feel like it when you’re sitting down to watch it, it’s not that much of a commitment.

This movie has a fantastic face game, but it has an even better cat game. If nothing else, these cats beat the crap outta Jiji. Please. Think about the cats.