The Boyfriend
ボーイフレンド
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
Japan's first same-sex dating reality: nine men run a coffee truck and share a seaside house; S2 moves to winter Hokkaido for two months.
The Boyfriend, Japan's first dating show for men who love men, puts gay and bisexual men in a shared house called the Green Room and has them run a coffee truck in pairs, each shift a day alone together. Dates happen only when two men choose each other, and nobody is voted off. MEGUMI chairs a studio panel with Chiaki Horan, Thelma Aoyama, the drag queen Durian Lollobrigida and the comedian Yoshimi Tokui.
The first season, in summer 2024, housed nine men by the sea at Tateyama. On the last day Kazuto tells Ryota, who has loved him all summer, that he cannot leave with him, and walks out with Alan, though they stayed friends. On the beach Shun, after weeks of pulling back, tells Dai how he feels and kisses him as a promise; two months later they became a couple.
The fuller second season, in 2026, brought ten men to a lodge by Lake Akan in winter Hokkaido for two months. Izaya, who lives in Australia, and William, who lives in Barcelona, turn out to share a past, having blocked each other online; they become a couple in the seventh episode. Kazuyuki, forty, arrives a year after a fifteen-year relationship ended. Huwei, a graduate student of gender and anthropology, goes home, comes out to his mother and is not accepted; when he tells the house, Bomi, who has never had a boyfriend, cries harder than he does. Ryuki, twenty, fears telling his father. Taeheon returns from the first season and is courted by Jobu, who has liked him since it aired. Tomoaki and Hiroya clash over the community Tomoaki says saved him, then make peace.
In the last episode Bomi takes Huwei back to the places they shared and asks him to be his first boyfriend. Huwei, who realised his feelings while away, says he had wanted to ask first. Tomoaki reads a letter to his parents. On the final day Taeheon, in tears, tells Jobu he likes him, and they leave together. Kazuyuki said afterwards that he had gone back to his partner of fifteen years.
Starring
Durian LollobrigidaPanel
An openly gay drag queen on the studio panel for both seasons, alongside MEGUMI, Chiaki Horan, Thelma Aoyama and Yoshimi Tokui.
HuweiParticipant
A graduate student of gender theory and anthropology, 26, who comes out to his mother during the season and ends it with Bomi.
BomiParticipant
A university student, 23, who has never had a boyfriend and hopes to find his first in the Green Room.
IzayaParticipant
A sales worker, 32, living in Australia and still healing from a breakup, who becomes William's boyfriend despite their past.
WilliamParticipant
A project manager, 34, born in Peru and living in Barcelona, who dreams of marriage and pairs with Izaya in episode 7.
KazuyukiParticipant
At 40 the eldest, arriving a year after a fifteen-year relationship ended, and quickly the house's older brother.
Why it matters
The Boyfriend was Japan's first dating show for men who love men, made in a country where two men still cannot marry. Durian Lollobrigida, the openly gay drag queen on its panel, has said the first worry was that gay lives would simply be consumed as entertainment by the majority. What the show did instead was slow and kind, and its first season entered the daily Top 10 in ten countries. The second, for which some thousand men applied, went further into what a romance can sit on top of: coming out to parents who may not accept it, a community that argues with itself, and how to build a lasting partnership when the law offers no marriage. The writer Soshi Matsuoka, who advised on the show, observed that viewers cry at the coming-out scenes because the walls are still there. The series is a love story and a record of those walls at once.