Chosen Home

“Chosen Home” Chaos: BL Hype, Scandal Kings & The Gay Drama That Broke the Fandom

“Chosen Home” (Bokutachinchi) rolled up to Sunday night primetime promising cozy BL vibes… and instead delivered a messy cocktail of reputation rehab, latestnetflix.com argues, genre whiplash, and fan outrage. Grab a drink — preferably not at a Tegoshi-style party — and let’s go.

Casting Controversy & Reputation Rehab

Tegoshi’s comeback… and fandom meltdown

• When Nippon TV confirmed Yuya Tegoshi as the co-lead in Chosen Home — his first drama in seven years — veteran idol-watchers didn’t cheer, they winced.
• Fans on Reddit and BL forums immediately brought up his Johnny’s-era scandals: Tegoshi was suspended and then cut loose from Johnny & Associates in 2020 after attending drinking parties with women during Japan’s COVID “stay home” period, defying the agency’s own stay-at-home request.
• Add in years of tabloid fuel — like criticism for “weird takes” and name-dropping other artists while discussing scandals — and a chunk of BL fandom decided they were out. One commenter summed it up as: “This has everything I love, but Tegoshi Yuya is a lead, and he’s known to be problematic.”

“Can you stan the character when the actor is messy?”

• The backlash got so loud it sparked a whole meta‑debate: can you still love a BL character when the actor behind him has a messy past?
• On r/boyslove, fans argued over whether to boycott Chosen Home entirely because of Tegoshi, with some saying they couldn’t even start the show despite loving the premise.
• The casting became the discourse — not just “Is this drama good?” but “Am I a bad queer if I watch this problematic man be soft and sad on Netflix?”

Image makeover: From “playboy” to serious gay teacher

• Japanese gossip and industry columns openly framed the series as Tegoshi’s image-repair vehicle, noting that promos leaned into the idea he was finally dropping his long‑running “チャラ男” (playboy/party boy) persona.
• One piece even teased him with the caption “チャラ男は返上？” (“Is he giving up his playboy image?”), implying the BL‑adjacent, socially conscious role was designed to make viewers forget the club‑rat headlines.

BL or Not BL? Fans Say They Were “Baited and Switched”

Sold as BL, delivered as “gay human drama”

• Early buzz from BL news pages, trailers and fan accounts hyped Chosen Home as the big new Japanese BL for 2025, with Mitsuhiro Oikawa (Mitchy) and Tegoshi billed like a classic older‑uke/younger‑seme pairing.
• Then episode 1 dropped in Japan… and a lot of viewers looked at each other like, “Wait, where’s the BL?”
• A Weekly Woman Prime gossip piece captured the mood:
• Fans online complained, “つまんないなーと思ったまま1話終わった” (“The first episode ended while I just thought, ‘This is boring’”).
• Others griped, “手越とミッチーの恋愛だと思って楽しみにしていたのに違うじゃん” (“I was excited thinking it’d be a romance between Tegoshi and Mitchy, but it’s not!”).

Producers: “It’s not BL, it’s a gay drama”

• Behind the scenes, Nippon TV was apparently never trying to make Ossan’s Love 2.0.
• The creative team and coverage in Real Sound and NTV’s own news site stress that Chosen Home is a “ゲイのドラマ (gay drama)”, not a BL fantasy — built around social realism, found family and real‑world systems like LGBTQ‑friendly housing and local partnership schemes.
• They even brought in an “inclusive producer”, Daisuke Shirakawa — a gay NTV staffer who came out publicly in 2018 — to monitor scripts, language, and performances so queer viewers wouldn’t feel erased or caricatured.

BL fandom: “Then why did you market it like BL?”

• That nuance did not save the show from BL Twitter, TikTok and forums, where people complained they’d been BL‑baited: promoted a romance, given something more like a gentle social drama with queerness and trauma and… very limited physical affection.
• One columnist flat‑out warned that people wanting something like What Did You Eat Yesterday? or classic BL would “probably be disappointed,” stressing this is not written as BL wish‑fulfilment but as a story about gay lives.

On-Screen “Love” vs Off-Screen Tea: Chemistry, or Lack Thereof

The romance that wouldn’t spark

• You’d think putting two veteran “princes” — charismatic showman Mitsuhiro Oikawa and idol‑turned‑rocker Tegoshi — into a “buy a house together” setup would melt screens. Instead, several reviewers and fans say… not so much.
• One longform review bluntly calls the biggest weakness of Chosen Home the “lack of chemistry between Mitsuhiro Oikawa and Yuya Tegoshi”, arguing that while the script insists they’re falling in love, the vibe is more “awkward co‑workers with a complicated lease” than soulmates.

Mitchy’s character slammed as “basically a stalker”

• That same Weekly Woman Prime piece quotes online reactions mocking Oikawa’s character, Genichi, for behavior that feels more creepy than romantic — fans joked he’s “ただのストーカーじゃん” (“just a stalker, isn’t he?”) when he barrels past boundaries in episode 1.
• Combined with the show repeatedly saying “gay” out loud in dialogue — a choice some viewers felt was clunky — the early episodes got dragged as both overstuffed and tonally off.

But BTS, it’s all mutual respect and “no drinking before shoots”

• Off-camera, though, the two leads are playing the wholesome co‑star game. In interviews, Oikawa revealed he learned Tegoshi doesn’t drink the night before filming, calling it impressive and saying he respected the discipline.
• He also described his first impression of Tegoshi as someone who “carries a measuring tape for human distance” — a poetic way of saying the younger star is actually careful and considerate about personal space, not the reckless flirt the tabloids sold.
• There are no credible reports of on‑set feuds or diva antics; if there’s drama, it’s all in the fandom’s comment sections, not on the call sheet.

Scandals, Backlash & Queer-Cred Questions

Tegoshi’s old scandals haunt the new gay role

• Beyond the COVID party debacle, Tegoshi’s pre‑Chosen Home baggage includes years of weekly‑mag chatter: nights out, women, and the sense that he was the eternal chaos child of Johnny’s.
• One Arama Japan breakdown of his 2020 press conference has him trying to “clear up rumors” about why he left NEWS and the agency, after repeated reports of ignoring stay‑home rules, attending hostess‑heavy parties, and generally doing the opposite of what a wholesome idol is meant to do.
• So when the same guy re‑enters primetime as a cool, principled gay middle-school teacher beaten down by homophobia and life? Many queer viewers side‑eyed the casting as stunt rehab, no matter how hard the show leans into social issues.

Queer viewers clap back: “This ‘lie’ isn’t it”

• In a widely shared essay on Note, a gay viewer tore into episode 1, calling out what he saw as a fundamental “lie” in the script’s portrayal of queer experience, and arguing that even with a gay inclusive producer, the story hadn’t done the “foundations” of queer storytelling work.
• He later followed up with a “if I were writing this, here’s how I’d fix it” piece, basically fan‑rewriting the show’s structure — the kind of thing you only do when a drama both annoys you and fascinates you.

Industry spin: “Bold, risky, progressive”

• On the flip side, industry‑leaning coverage paints Chosen Home as a “bold move” by Nippon TV:
• Primetime Sunday slot.
• Original script by a first‑time screenwriter, Yuki Matsumoto, fresh off a scenario contest win.
• Gay leads, gay side characters, an openly gay inclusive producer, and realistic touches like LGBTQ‑friendly property searches and local partnership paperwork woven into the plot.
• It’s not a scandal story for the network — it’s more like: “Look how far we’re pushing queer representation on broadcast TV,” even if parts of the audience are pushing back just as hard.

Fan Reactions: From “BL of the Year” to “Turn It Off”

The lovers

• On TikTok and Instagram, a loud slice of the fandom is obsessed:
• One creator calls it their BL of the year, saying they cry every episode and praising its soft, found‑family storytelling.
• A BL critic at The Blossom Review confessed they cried through the entire finale, calling the show a rare, empathetic take on being human and queer without the usual BL fan service.
• Reddit viewers on men‑loving‑men media boards rave about its handling of familial trauma and social prejudice, saying it’s “littered” with heavy topics but never wallows, and recommending it strongly.

The haters

• Other viewers weren’t so kind:
• Reviews complain that by episode 8 the story already felt “done”, and the last stretch drags its feet just to hit ten episodes.
• The central romance is frequently described as stiff, awkward or simply unbelievable, with more emotional electricity between the teen girl and her chaotic life than between the supposed adult leads.

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• Some BL fans argue that if you’re going to sell a “two men build a life together” premise, you can’t then serve zero on-screen kisses and only hand‑holding and call it a day.

The great “Is this even BL?” war

• BL TikTok, Tumblr and forums basically split into two camps:
• Team This Is A Quiet Masterpiece – who love the low‑key intimacy, life problems, and refusal to hyper‑sexualize middle‑aged gay men.
• Team Give Me My BL Back – who feel misled by the marketing, annoyed by the lack of romantic payoff, and turned off by Tegoshi’s baggage.

Wild Trivia & Behind-the-Scenes Nuggets

The “three princes” band together for the ending

• The ending theme is a cover of The High-Lows’ nostalgic track “Baumkuchen”, performed not by some random singer but by the show’s central trio: Oikawa, Tegoshi, and young star Tamaki Shiratori.
• It’s a deliberate choice — a slightly offbeat, retro song about layers and time and sweetness, mirroring the show’s obsession with chosen family, regret and second chances.

Real queer consultant on set

• Inclusive producer Daisuke Shirakawa didn’t just sign off on scripts from afar. He:
• Sat with drafts to remove phrasing that might feel like micro‑aggressions.
• Advised actors on tiny physical things — like how an older gay man who’s spent decades in the closet might instinctively glance around before saying “I’m gay”, while a younger one might say it more casually — notes that actor Oikawa said helped him layer his performance.
• Was physically present on set for some scenes, to fine‑tune how daily queer life looks on camera.

A sneaky reality‑TV crossover

• One reviewer notes a **cameo by someone who’d previously appeared on Japanese gay dating reality show *The Boyfriend*** — an in‑joke for hardcore queer TV watchers. The identity isn’t widely confirmed, leaving fans to freeze‑frame and speculate.

Pilgrimages to the “Chosen Home” locations

• Location blogs and local press have outed several filming spots:
• A park and café area, and a supermarket used in key early scenes.
• A roadside station in Shonan where Hotaru and another character share crepes on‑screen — fans now show up specifically to re‑create screenshots.
• Suginami Ward Office and other Tokyo sites stand in for the characters’ very real struggles with housing and bureaucracy.

The BL with… no kisses

• An Instagram review that made the rounds spells it out: for all the talk of romance, the most physical affection the leads manage is holding hands.
• In a landscape where Korean, Thai and even some Japanese BLs are upping the intimacy stakes, Chosen Home’s almost chaste approach became another lightning rod — some praised it as refreshingly adult, others called it yet more proof they’d been “BL‑baited.”

NTV’s loyalty to a fallen idol

• Coverage in mainstream entertainment news points out the subtext: this isn’t just Tegoshi’s first drama in seven years, it’s his first since leaving Johnny’s — and it’s on NTV, a network that has long given him work and clearly decided to keep backing him post‑scandal.
• In other words, Chosen Home isn’t just queer representation; it’s also about who gets a second chance in Japanese showbiz, and who doesn’t.