Netflix's new drama "First Love", starring Hikaru Mitshima and Ken Sato, will meet you on the 24th of this month. This is the most anticipated Japanese drama this year, not one of them!
The play draws inspiration from two songs by Hikaru Utada: the 1999 Divine Comedy "First Love" and "First Love", released after a 19-year absence. For many people, it's simply a three-chef ecstasy.
The story tells a very classic Japanese love: a pair of lovers met in the 90s, and after 20 years, they are still in an unforgettable relationship. Ken Sato plays pilot Harumichi Namiki, and Hikaru Mitshima plays Yahide Noguchi, who aspires to become a flight attendant, but changes his fate due to an accident...
In the first trailer released in October, the familiar melody of "First Love" sounds, and the high school and adult years are intertwined, from school uniforms and bicycles to cherry blossoms and white snow.
How long has it been since you watched a Japanese pure love drama? Campus, the shyness of first love, the parting of youth, unexpected encounters... Everything is wrapped in light colors, not strong sorrow and the longest love.
Recently, after the popular bizarre settings of various male and female protagonists, Japanese dramas seem to have begun to return to the "original intention" and re-operate their most playful "pure love", I thought that the current audience did not buy it, but I didn't expect that no matter what generation, love is still pure and fragrant.
The Japanese drama "Still Snow", which just started broadcasting in October, is on fire.
In China, Douban scored 9.0, and now it has dropped slightly to 8.8, and the male protagonist Muheilian's Weibo super talk has been read by more than 600 million; in Japan, the weekly broadcast volume has broken the record of TVer people's TV dramas, setting a new record for all programs in the history of Fuji TV; even on Twitter, it has won the first place in the world's fashion trends.
Unlike the previous fantasy, futuristic, and reasoning, these hot themes have nothing to do with it, "Still Snow" is an unfast-paced pure love drama, and the story is very simple, it is a love triangle.
The heroine Aoha Takashi (played by Haruna Kawaguchi) in her second year of high school, was attracted by the voice of the male protagonist Sakura Xiang (played by Meguro Ren) who read the composition aloud at the morning meeting, and the two who became classmates in the third year of high school narrowed the distance through friends, and deepened the relationship (early) department (love) because of their common musical interests - a kind and beautiful girl, a shy and shy boy, even the teacher couldn't help but ridicule "youth is so good" when he saw it.
But before graduating, Sakura wanted to say goodbye. The breakup text message reads: I have someone I like, let's not see each other again.
Like many Japanese dramas and real reality, people who are separated at the end of their youth are often really difficult to see again. The male protagonist and all his high school classmates are disconnected, and the female protagonist graduates, goes to school, and works on her own timeline... Become a qualified adult.
The heroine Qingyu's current boyfriend is the good brother of the male protagonist in high school, and he has always been secretly in love with the female protagonist, and finally got what he wanted. Their relationship is still very stable, and the two love each other deeply and begin to plan to get married.
However, however, it was time for a twist to come.
One day, on a day when there was nothing special, Aoba met Sakura by chance on the subway. She called out his name and chased after him, but Sakura still walked forward without looking back, until Aoba tapped him on the shoulder and he turned back.
The lovers, who had not seen each other for nearly a decade, had completely lost their hearing when they met again and could only communicate in sign language. Seeing this, you may feel that the direction of the story line seems to be a bit bloody, but "Still Snow" actually achieved a "touching love triangle", and the personalities of the three protagonists are very "normal", with straightforward words, decent and thoughtful, and no wisdom reduction.
Although the peaceful lives of the three were shattered because of a chance encounter, they all tried to sort out this mess in a sober and reasonable way. As for where the rest of the story goes? How can the male and female protagonists reasonably come back together? Or the screenwriter is bold enough to come to a BE ending like "Tokyo Love Story", we will wait and see.
The unexpected popularity of "Still Snow" can be said to be a "retaliatory response" to several years of romance dramas, and friends familiar with Japanese dramas should know the decline of the main romance drama "Moon Nine" (equivalent to the golden eight-o'clock stall).
It's not that people don't like to watch pure love movies or TV series, but there are always people who misunderstand that the audience no longer likes to listen to the confession "the moon is so beautiful tonight", and then create a bunch of works that make people emmmmm. Last year's "Bouquet of Love" fire is a sign of the return of pure love.
In "Still Snow", we can see a large number of very "Japanese drama retro" bridges, and the male and female protagonists often repeat the same meaning, share the same pair of headphones, like the same song, and chat about some words on the way from school. Just like in "Love Letter", the heroine shouts at the mountain over and over again, "How are you?" I'm fine", the male protagonist "bored" borrowed books in the library that no one read, and wrote down the common name "Fujii Tree" with the female protagonist over and over again.
Can these too small details and slow rhythms still impress today's audience? The answer is, absolutely.
"This is Love!" aired at about the same time. "Bad Boy and White Cane Girl" also has a good score of 8.5 on Douban, telling the story of a street gangster who falls in love with a girl with eye disease, and the deeper core is how they heal each other as people on the fringes of society.
If the previous pure love Japanese drama popular girls accompanied boys to realize their dreams, then what is popular now is to heal each other, compared to overcoming thorns and thorns, healing, especially internal injuries has become the mainstream, which is also a direct reflection of the changes in the big times in creation.
The heyday of pure love Japanese dramas is the era when there was no mobile phone, and the crush was still hesitant to write a love letter, and the feeling of facing love for the first time is similar in any era, after all, we are just ordinary people, and the most unforgettable vigorous is nothing more than being happy with someone, confessing success, and walking together for a life.
In pure love dramas, our most simple love fantasy can be answered, even if it ends up BE, it's not a big deal, who hasn't fallen out of love?
In short, welcome to the return of Japanese pure love drama. Life is too hard, and you need to make up some non-industrial sugar.
Written by: Mie
Image: Douban, video screenshot