Believe it or not, I had so many book and J-drama reviews planned for the first half of 2025, and yet here I am in May, just now publishing something new on this blog for the very first time this year. Charge it to my hormones, not my heart. (Backstory: I started a new medication in January. It's serving the purpose it was prescribed for, but it's hard to write about the stuff you read and watch when you're not finishing anything, and it's hard to finish things when your brain is foggy and your concentration is sometimey.) Anyway, I think I've finally adjusted enough to get back into writing again, so here's my review of a scandalous infidelity-themed J-drama that I watched in the second half of 2024, a heart-wrenching yet adorable father-daughter J-drama that I finished this February, and an honorable mention K-drama that I finished last month.
夫の家庭を壊すまで (Otto no Katei wo Kowasu Made/Until I Destroy My Husband's Family/Until I Destroy My Husband's Household) - TV Tokyo, 2024
- Minori is a Waseda University-educated mother and housewife, and Yudai works in sales. Minori believes that they've been happy together for the past 17 years, until she sees a text on her husband's phone from a mysterious contact named "W.M." Suspicious, she follows her husband around one night and discovers that he has a
whole second family. This family includes a hairdresser/salon owner named Riko who
was one of their high school classmates, and her 18-year-old son Wataru (the "W.M" who's been texting Yudai). Back in high school, Yudai knew Riko first before getting close to Minori. Sometime after marrying Minori, Yudai
rekindled his relationship with Riko (after she had a baby by a different married man), and has been spending time with Riko and Wataru on the side for about a decade.
- Minori's female lawyer friend strategizes a divorce plan for her, but thousands in alimony isn't
enough. Minori wants to punish Yudai for his "crime" of adultery, and destroy his second family too. She begins by getting herself hired
part-time as one of Wataru's juku (cram school) tutors, so she can gain
intel via proximity and manipulate Wataru via the crush he develops on her. Which is how she learns that Riko is pregnant with Yudai's child. More sleuthing reveals that not only does her mother-in-law prefer Yudai's side family, but mother and son have been plotting on Minori since high school! Minori is the secret love child of a former employee of the Tsukishiro jewelry company and the company's current chariman, and Yudai's mother knows this because she used to housekeep for the Tsukishiros. Yudai was coached by his struggling single mother to date and marry Minori, so they could eventually manipulate Minori out of an inheritance that she didn't even know she had. (Minori's mother died when she was a child, and her maternal grandfather raised her without informing her of her heiress status.)
- Armed with the full knowledge of her husband and mother-in-law's scheme, her grandfather's deathbed confession about her parentage, her father's resources, and Wataru's misplaced loyalty, Minori enacts her revenge. She gets her mother-in-law fired, gets Yudai exposed at work and demoted, rubs their deceit and imminent poverty in both of their faces, causes Yudai to abandon Riko, demands that Yudai sign divorce papers, and leaves town with her and Yudai's young son Tsubasa. Seven years later, Minori (now 40) is running a kid-friendly cafe in the countryside, and by pure coincidence Wataru (now 25) shows up as a new teacher at Tsubasa's school. He makes clear that he still desires her and that he's not a kid anymore, which she repeatedly rebuffs at first. Meanwhile, Yudai is a pitiful shell of his former self hoping Minori will give him a second chance, and having learned nothing from their comeuppance, both his mother and Riko devise ways to get back at Minori.
Meh: The hair technology is still not technology-ing! Just like in 'Tokyo Girl' and '
Fukushuu no Miboujin', we have yet another female lead sporting yet another egregiously terrible bob-with-extensions combo that isn't blended well! The color match is
perfect but the overall cut and shape are not, which is especially obvious in
episodes 2 and 3. Minori goes to Riko's salon to get her hair cut by (and spook the life out of) Riko in episode 4, so obviously the "new" bob is
the hairstyle the actress has had all along (which looks fantastic on
her!), and she only needed extensions to give her character the illusion of long tresses for the beginning of the series. But come on! Y'all gotta at least pretend to care
about pulling off a hairstyle that's convincing!
Better: I was unprepared the level of empathy displayed between Minori and Wataru. Minori does use the boy to hurt his mom, but she also recognizes that he's not at fault for her husband's affair. And when Minori reveals to Wataru who she really is in episode 4, he doesn't expose her identity or her plan to Riko and Yudai. Because of their shared experience as children of affairs, he empathizes with how much Minori has suffered due to Riko and Yudai's selfishness, and shockingly, he promises to help her with whatever she needs for her revenge plot so that he and his mom can be forgiven. Minori is cognizant of the fact that she doesn't deserve Wataru's empathy given the power imbalance between them, and she's steadfast about keeping her distance from him in the flash forward (episodes 9 through 12), but he insists on offering it anyway. Now grown, having tried to approach Minori multiple times, Wataru gets caught in the rain with her in episode 10 and they take shelter in a construction site. During this scene he explains to Minori that although she
used him, he credits her for setting him on the path to becoming a
Wasei-educated teacher and an overall more caring person. They make out (initiated by him) after he moves her to tears by calling out the sense of guilt he sees in her for making bad
people suffer even though they deserved it, because he feels the same guilt, and he believes
they can overcome it and move on together as a couple. Their kiss is interrupted by a phone call from her son, and Minori once again rejects Wataru (not wanting to hurt her son, Wataru, or Wataru's little sister/Riko and Yudai's lovechild), but the pair do make their own unique commitment to each other by the end of the series. I'm not saying their relationship is right or appropriate, I'm just saying their ability to empathize with each other and eventually fall in love on less imbalanced terms makes narrative sense in context.
Speaking of Wataru, I appreciate how much 'Otto no Katei' is willing to lean into giving us someone to hate (in addition to Yudai and his mother), that someone being Wataru's mother. Riko is such a bird! Sure, she's been desperate for love her whole life and has never been anyone's first choice. But the show never lets the audience forget how much of a bird she is, and the audience is allowed to keep judging her for it, especially since Yudai is getting his just desserts too. We can look down on them both! Which is so much fun! (For those who don't know, a "bird" is what Black people have been calling women who forsake their dignity in order to get, keep, or align with men for decades, long before "pick-me" became the more recent popular slang term for that same phenomenon.) You are a MOTHER! Why does your SON have to run
away, then agree to move back in on the condition that you leave your married boyfriend alone, in order for you to finally stop messing with said married boyfriend? I know I just waxed on and on about empathy, and I know Nichole Perkins said side chicks deserve empathy too. But some (fictional) side chicks deserve to be told about themselves, some of them deserve to lose something, and shows like this and the K-drama 'Doctor Cha' understand that in a way that satisfies the petty subsection of my soul. Nonami Maho truly did her job playing this character, because literally the only thing I liked about Riko was the fact that she resembled the singer Che'Nelle.
Best: The way Matsumoto Marika plays Minori as a woman who's losing her mind (actively
unraveling at home and in meetings with her lawyer friend), but who's
also still shrewd enough to keep saying targeted things to her husband and gauging his reactions (repeatedly toeing the line of almost revealing what she knows before the time is right)? The serial killer energy of her performance reminded me so much of Dominique Fishback's performance
in 'Swarm.' Especially Matsumoto's ability to deftly switch between emotional levels, facial expressions, and tone of voice. One minute she's the dutiful housewife with the cutesy high-pitched voice who pretends to be oblivious to her husband's exploits, the next she's a gravelly-voiced woman scorned who's ready to stab and/or scare him to death. Just magnificent.
Also, the opening theme song, "
down under" by zakinosuke (now known as YUSII)? It GOES! I dare you not to body roll to it!
海のはじまり (Umi no Hajimari/Umi's Beginning/The Beginning of the Sea/Where Does the Sea Begin) - Fuji TV/2024
- Eight years after the last time he saw Mizuki (his ex-girlfriend from college), Natsu gets word that Mizuki has died from cervical caner. At the funeral, he meets Mizuki's nearly 7-year-old daughter, whom Mizuki's mother Akane (the child's grandmother) reveals is his daughter too. Natsu
impregnated Mizuki in college, but didn't learn this until she had him sign an abortion consent form. She couldn't go through with the abortion but also didn't want to limit Natsu's future prospects (knowing that he'd drop everything to father his child if he knew she kept it). So she let him believe that she underwent the abortion, then dropped out of school without telling him, and then broke up with
him over the phone, lying that she fell in love with someone
else. She proceeded to raise the baby (the titular Umi) as a single mother, with increasingly more help from her friendzoned library co-worker Tsuno and her parents as her cancer was diagnosed and worsened.
- At the funeral, Akane tearfully asks Natsu to consider raising Umi, but
doesn't give him a chance to process and respond before walking
away and taking Umi with her. On the other hand, Umi becomes so obsessed with forging a connection with Natsu that the next day, while Akane is out running errands, Umi sneaks out and visits Natsu at his apartment all by herself. (She knows the way because Mizuki had previously walked her there and told her that this is where her father "Natsu-kun" lives.) This leads to a loose visitation arrangement, where Umi and Natsu alternately spend time at each other's homes and on outings, Natsu learns more about how Mizuki was living before she died, and Mizuki's parents patiently advise Natsu while waiting for him to decide if he wants to assume his parental rights to Umi or not.
- Natsu comes from an unconventional family himself (a blended family consisting of his once-divorced mom, his stepdad, and his younger step-brother), and so seeks their input on the Umi situation. This is in addition to the input of his supervisor at work, and that of his girlfriend Yayoi, who often participates in his visitations with Umi despite her own complicated relationship with the notion of motherhood. Even as Umi is ready to love Natsu and Natsu gradually embraces the changes he must make to be the father she needs, hiccups abound that they both learn to bounce back from. And while Natsu must decide whether to legally acknowledge his daughter, Umi must decide who she wants to live with, and if she's willing to change schools and leave her grandparents to live with Natsu. All of this, while everyone continues grieving Mizuki in their own respective ways.
Meh: I don't like how the script has Yayoi tell Natsu that she "murdered" the baby she previously aborted (more on that later). But given that the scene is her opportunity to be more honest with Natsu and admit how her over-eagerness to fill the role of Umi's new mom was motivated more by a desire to assuage her own guilt than by genuine affection for Umi (more on that later too), I can let it
slide.
Better: The writing of 'Umi no Hajimari' offers an abundance of
vulnerability, and so many difficult but necessary conversations. The
last time I recall witnessing J-drama dialogue this consistently nuanced
and mature was in '
Prism.' And maybe '
Rikon Shiyou Yo' too.
Also, it's
common for Japanese names to be nature-themed, but that theme seems particularly pronounced through this show's character names. Natsu (meaning in
summer, plus his last name Tsukioka partially refers to the moon,
"tsuki"). Umi (meaning sea, Mizuki's favorite place that she and Natsu used to frequent together). Mizuki (the "mizu" refers to water,
plus her and Umi's last name is Nagumo, meaning southern cloud). Yet
another commonality I noticed between this J-drama and '
Silent', in addition to both shows featuring Meguro Ren as a lead character who has trouble communicating verbally. (In 'Silent' his character stops talking once he
loses his hearing, whereas in 'Umi no Hajimari' his character is simply not very
talkative or outspoken.) And as I write this I'm discovering that these
commonalities aren't merely coincidental, since both shows share the same
screenwriter (Ubukata Miku) and directors (Kazama Hiroki and Takano
Mai)!
Best: This little big-eyed 7-year-old girl is so precious! As Umi, Izutani Rana is one of the most impressive child actresses I've seen in a very long time. The baby can act! And apparently she's been in the industry since she was 2.
As integral figures in the Natsu/Mizuki/Umi saga, the
side characters are what give this show extra heart. Even from just the
first two episodes, I was astounded by Otake Shinobu's ability to
portray all the nuances of pressure that Akane is under: having to
balance her own grief with the responsibility of raising her
granddaughter, holding the floor open for
Natsu to step up as a father, but also having patience for the fact that
he's going to be ready right away, thus masking her own disappointment and
managing Umi's expectations, while not
crushing the child's hope of having a relationship with Natsu or making
Umi think that his hesitancy is the child's fault. The show does not
work without Akane fostering opportunities for Natsu and Umi to bond despite her own trepidation and pain, and Otake
Shinobu gets every bit of that across.
Tsuno's character is important representation for people
outside of a deceased person's family who get left out of the grieving
process, despite having been a mainstay in that person's life while
they were living. Akane belatedly calls Tsuno and acknowledges as
much to him,
thanking him for taking care of Umi when
Mizuki was too stubborn to accept her parents' help (before she got sick
and moved back into her parents' house with Umi). In that same phone
call Akane apologizes to Tsuno and invites him to Mizuki's 49th
day burial ceremony, and you can read on his usually stoic or sour face how much hearing that
acknowledgement means to him. He basically set his (mostly) unrequited
feelings for
Mizuki aside and spent years of his life helping to raise Umi out of the
goodness of his heart, picking the girl up from daycare and babysitting her at his place as Mizuki needed. He encouraged Mizuki to
tell Umi's
birth father about her existence, looked after Mizuki in the hospital
as her cancer worsened, everything. Only to feel cast
aside and cut off from Umi after Mizuki's funeral. He'd tried to help
sort through Mizuki and Umi's belongings at Mizuki's apartment, but
Akane refused his assistance, saying "the family" would take care of
it. With Akane rectifying that by acknowledging Tsuno as family, Tsuno
received the validation he deserved.
The other side character who makes an indelible difference in this show is Yayoi (Arimura Kasumi from '
Call Me Chihiro' and
Hanataba Mitai na Koi wo Shita). Learning about Mizuki and Umi from Natsu is triggering for her because,
as it turns out, she had an abortion in a prior relationship.
Just like Mizuki did with Natsu, Yayoi presented the abortion consent form to her
then-boyfriend and he signed it, but unlike Mizuki she followed through with the procedure. Years later, Yayoi still keeps that fetus's sonogram in
an envelope, tucked inside an old diary in one of her drawers. She
even maintains a memorial locker and tablet for the fetus at a separate
location from her apartment. THAT backstory made me
realize why an actress of Arimura's caliber took on this non-leading
role. And the honesty in her character's trajectory is so rich! Yayoi
goes from gleefully trying to be Umi's replacement mom, to
pulling away from both Natsu and Umi (starting to resent that all her
time with her boyfriend tends to now include Umi too), to fully
accepting that she actually doesn't want
to be slotted in as Umi's mom after all now that she's no longer
motivated by her abortion guilt like she was when she first met Umi. She
loves Natsu and Umi, and
enjoyed being a trio at first, but ultimately doesn't want to be Umi's
mom.
Especially not with the spectre and mention of Mizuki looming over
everything, when Yayoi never met and didn't know the woman; this "family" of three she thought
she
wanted doesn't feel like it belongs to her, and it makes her jealous,
which she hates being.
So she declines becoming Umi's mom in any official sense and tearfully
breaks up with Natsu in epsiode 9, admitting that what she truly wants
(a relationship with just her and Natsu) is not possible. And it's so
painful for them both, and they don't fault each other at all,
because in order to be happy Yayoi HAS to choose herself, and Natsu HAS
to choose Umi. So much meat to chew on as an actor, so much for Arimura to do, and she does it superbly.
And
apparently, Yayoi unknowingly contributed to Umi being born in the
first place. It's only revealed to the audience that at the last minute,
what changed Mizuki's mind about having an abortion was the entry Yayoi
had written in the clinic's "thoughts and feelings book"
(coincidentally they visited the same women's health clinic for their
procedures). Yayoi's entry expresses her guilt about having an abortion
and her frustration at not having
the support from her then-boyfriend and her mom that would've enabled
her to
make a different choice. She knows it's the best decision for her
situation at that time, but she doesn't want other women to follow what
others say and ignore what they really want like she did. Women should
decide for themselves, and make the choice that will make them happiest.
Reading this made Mizuki realize that what would make her happiest was
keeping her child, even if it meant letting Natsu go.
Honorable Mention: What Comes After Love - Coupang Play, 2024
Based on a 2005 novel of the same name co-written by
Gong Ji-Young and Tsuji Hitonari, 'What Comes After Love' is technically a K-drama, but since it's another bilingual show set between Tokyo and Seoul about a Japanese person and a Korean person falling for each other (similar to '
Eye Love You'), I decided to include it here. I've also never forgotten the impression Sakaguchi Kentaro left on me in '
Soshite, Ikiru' and was eager to watch him work again. Contrary to the pairing in 'Eye Love You,' this time the people falling in love are a Korean woman and a Japanese man.
In the spring of 2019, an aimless but optimistic college grad and musician named Hong (Lee Se-young) moves from South Korea to Japan to try living on her own for the first time, taking her fellow Korean friend up on her offer to split the rent. Upon arrival at her new home station near Inokashira Park, she runs into Jungo (Sakaguchi Kentaro), who helps her get her luggage unstuck from an exit ticket gate, takes a picture of Hong and her friend together per their request, and bids them goodbye. Hong and Jungo meet again while both vying for a job at a ramen shop, and the two see each other every day due to Jungo working at a nearby food truck and them both volunteering for their neighborhood business association's clean-up crew. Aside from their mutual attraction, they bond over a shared love of literature: as the eldest daughter of a renowned Korean-Japanese interpreter/translator Hong has enrolled in Japanese classes at a local university with plans to pursue a graduate degree in literature, while Jungo is already a literature graduate student who dreams of publishing his own novel one day. After they start dating Hong moves in with Jungo, and the lovers give each other cognate nicknames in their respective languages; Jungo calls Hong "Beni" and Hong calls Jungo "Yun-o."
Unfortunately, as Jungo becomes increasingly absent due to his multiple jobs, the isolation of being emotionally neglected in a foreign country while her family faces financial and health struggles back home becomes too much for Hong (plus, her best friend had already moved back to Korea). So she leaves a parting letter for Jungo before moving back to Seoul in the middle of the night. By 2024 (the present), Hong has thrown herself into her career as a director at her father's publishing/translation company and is unenthusiastically engaged to a doctor and longtime friend. Of course, when she's required to assist one of her subordinates in picking up a Japanese
author client named "Sasae Hikari" from the airport to promote his new book in Korea, "Sasae Hikari"
turns out to be none other than Jungo. (The novel he's promoting has the
same title as this K-drama. It's a fictionalized version of their
relationship, with reflections on where he went wrong, written
in hopes that she'd read it and understand why he so regrettably
fumbled their relationship the way he did.) Jungo tries multiple times to speak with Hong privately, and Hong avoids him like the plague. Meanwhile, Hong drags her feet on wedding planning and Dr. Rebound notices. Meanwhile, Jungo's literary agent Kanna (my girl Nakamura Anne from 'Kikazaru Koi' and so many other things) unexpectedly joins him on this promotional trip; Kanna and Jungo dated before he met Hong, and Kanna wants that old thang back.
Thematically, this K-drama is very reminiscent of
Hanataba Mitai na Koi wo Shita, one of the JFF+ (now JFF Theater) online film festival selections I watched last year. Both productions feature a passionate relationship between two university students going sour, when the boyfriend gets so engrossed with working to provide for himself and his girlfriend that he doesn't have time to be present or attentive anymore. Both productions also philosophize about what love is and what it means. When Hong breaks up with Jungo, she laments that no love stays the same or lasts forever, and in the present she still assumes that Jungo's love for her lessened (that he stopped caring about her), because how else did he not notice how lonely she was? But Jungo insists that his love for her never changed. Answering the titular question "What comes after love?" during one of his book events in Korea, Jungo muses that one only truly understands what love means after the love (the
relationship) has ended. So in a way, regret is inevitable for people
who love; the deeper the love, the deeper the regret when it's over, and he feels so much regret now precisely
because he loved and still loves Hong so much, not because his love waned. The final episode further emphasizes that no love is meaningless, that
love is a blessing no matter what kind it is or how long it lasts. Hong
and Jungo even have a moment to finally sit down and talk the night before he's set to leave Seoul, where he apologizes to her for not taking her
loneliness seriously, and she (having finally read his book for herself) thanks him for loving her during that time and writing a book about what they had. This seems to be the end of their relationship, with both prepared to leave each other alone after having made peace with one another (a similar fate to that of the
Hanabata Mitai couple). That is, until Jungo demonstrates one last time that he's unwilling to give up on them. I won't spoil how they get back together, but I respect this show for preparing the audience to accept either conclusion. I doubly respect this show for its stunningly tender and yearning end credit song, "
Closer than the stars" by Fromm. Even as someone who's never known romantic love, the song almost (only almost!) made me cry.
Getting back to the J-dramas, if I had to choose my favorite between 'Otto no Katei' and 'Umi no Hajimari', I'd have to admit that while the latter is better written, the former is my favorite because of all the mess, the scandal, and how willing the show is to take it there, you know? Off I go to find more Japanese film and television to review, and hopefully it won't take me another nine months to publish my next edition of The J-Drama Drop!
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