Continuing from part 1 of this edition of "The J-Drama Drop", it appears I had more to say about my most recent roster than I thought. (I took too many notes and I've had too many months to think about these stories, apparently.) Coincidentally the last two items in this review are each centered around death and memory, so it works out.
さよならのつづき (Sayonara no Tsuzuki/Beyond Goodbye) - Netflix, 2024
- During a bus ride up a snowy mountain in Hokkaido, Saeko's boyfriend Yusuke accidentally proposes to her; he had a more formal proposal planned once they reached the top of the mountain, but he let it slip early. Saeko (Arimura Kasumi from 'Umi no Hajiimari') accepts, and they only have a few minutes to bask in their happiness before the bus is caught in an avalanche, Yusuke is killed, and his heart is then transplanted into a patient who needs it. In her grief, Saeko does some of the things she and Yusuke had talked about doing together as a married couple; she buys the little blue house that Yusuke wanted to live in with her, and she brews artisanal coffee every morning. (Yusuke was a coffee enthusiast who met Saeko while he was on vacation in Hawaii, and she was there on a business trip for the coffee company she worked for.)
- Kazumasa (Sakaguchi Kentaro from 'What Comes After Love') experienced heart failure and was hospitalized while waiting for a new heart to become available to him. That new heart was Yusuke's heart. After recovering from transplant surgery and returning to his routine (working as a university student services coordinator while also helping his wife's family run their apple orchard), Kazu writes a letter to his heart donor's next of kin, Saeko. Per hospital policy, Kazu and Saeko aren't made privy to each other's identities. But their paths cross anyway because they have the same daily commute, and one morning when Kazu makes coffee for all his fellow stranded passengers while their train is temporarily stopped, Saeko lends him a hand. He senses an immediate familiarity with her, which is one of numerous indications that some of Yusuke's memories and emotions have been transferred to Kazu. (Even Kazu's interest in coffee is something he received from Yusuke, since Kazu disliked coffee before.)
- Saeko and Kazu slide into an occasionally awkward but mostly easy friendship, facilitated by even more serendipity: when Kazu's university contacts a local coffee company to be a supplier for the new student-run cafe he's supervising, Saeko is the representative sent there to work with Kazu. With so many of Yusuke's fond memories of Saeko rushing at Kazu, and Saeko seeing Kazu's surgery scar in addition to hearing him utter specific phrases that Yusuke would say to her when he was alive, the two eventually realize exactly how bizarrely connected they are. Their friendship dips into emotional affair territory, with neither being able to stay away from each other, and neither being able to distinguish whether their mutual yearning is organic or merely a result of Yusuke's lingering presence.
Meh: A
CGI bear appears in front of Saeko in an episode 7 scene that I'm sure
is meant to be symbolic, but it's so random and unnecessary that I can't
fathom what that symbolism could be. News coverage of the sighting
prompts Kazu to reach out to Saeko so they can meet for what Saeko
decides will be the "last" time, because she's finally decided that
leaving him alone is for the best. But if the show needed a newsworthy
event to bring Saeko to the front of Kazu's mind so that this false
farewell scene could happen, the writers could've chosen anything! A CGI
bear? Really?
I have a theory that's needling me,
but in order to tease it out I have to spoil how 'Beyond Goodbye' ends.
(*Consider this your SPOILER WARNING!*) There's a trope discussed in media criticism called the "Sick Girl" trope, wherein a terminally ill female character exists primarily to boost the development of a male protagonist—often teaching him the meaning of life
or helping him to progress in some way—before she dies. And
in 'Beyond Goodbye', I would argue that Kazu is Saeko's sick boy. The
heart transplant only extends Kazu's life for about a year before his
body rejects it and he dies, and overall Saeko benefits more from their
interactions than Kazu does. Sure, Kazu makes a new friend he can nerd
out over coffee with, discuss the effects of his transplant with, suck
face with, etc. But Saeko gets all of that in addition to extra
doses of her dead husband (via spending time with Kazu and pressing her
head against his chest to listen to Yusuke's heart), which she gets to
be gradually weaned off of, before moving on with a new outlook on
life, without a terminal prognosis hanging over her head. If Kazu
was going to die within a relatively short time frame anyway, he could've
spent his last days not accidentally falling in love with someone else and agonizing over the confusion this causes him, not making out with and almost having sex with this person, not risking death to travel to a Hawaiian coffee farm on top of a mountain to see this person one last time, not sending his wife spiraling into multiple private breakdowns, not being a vessel for someone else's grief, and ultimately not
having false hope about his future. To be clear, I'm not sincerely complaining about Kazu's
main purpose being to help Saeko make peace with losing Yuske. I'm simply pointing it out. And honestly, it's intriguing to see a male character serving that purpose for a
female character for a change.
Better: 'Beyond Goodbye' doesn't get too technical about how
common or possible it truly is for memories to get transferred from an
organ donor to a recipient, and that's for the best. The exercise of pondering what's intrinsic
to someone's unique personhood while they're alive (what knowledge or inclinations are
stored in one's "heart" both literally and figuratively), versus what can
get transferred between people through organ transplant, is what
matters most here. The "what if" is what matters. Obviously the
phenomenon is exaggerated for dramatic effect, but the show does
acknowledge in a scene between Kazu and his cardiologist that while
it's not scientifically proven that implantees retain the memories of
the their donors, there are reported cases.
I
initially didn't care for Kazu's wife Miki being so insecure and taking
his personality changes personally; she fears that if post-op Kazu can
like new things, then he can also dislike new things, and she doesn't
want him to outgrow her. But once she became aware of his
closeness with Saeko and actually had something to worry about, I was
able to sympathize with how much Miki suffers because of Kazu and
Saeko's actions. She confronts Saeko and demands that Saeko stop meeting up
with Kazu, but she walks away being made to feel like she's the
one being irrational and unfair; Saeko defensively rebuts that
Kazu contains the only remaining part of Yusuke that she can access, and Miki doesn't know what losing a husband is like. When Kazu flies to Hawaii to visit Saeko in the final episode and lies to her about having a long healthy life to look
forward to back in Japan, Miki feels she has no choice but to let him go
on that trip. She loves him more than she resents Saeko, and she knows
he feels compelled see Saeko one last time before he dies. Not only
that, but Miki is the one who has to call Saeko in advance with the
truth, not only so Saeko can share some of the painful burden of that
knowledge—which is fair!—but also so Miki can advise Saeko against even thinking about having sex with her husband.
(Literally, "If he has sex, he could die," because it might cause too much strain on his heart. When I heard her say that I
wrote in my notes, This show is so grown! Wow.) To her credit,
Miki does get slight revenge on Saeko, if you want to call it that.
After Kazu's passing, she insists that Saeko come help during harvest
season at the apple orchard once a year as payback (because Saeko owes
her at least that), but also
because she wants to see Saeko. It's implied that just like Kazu was a
vestige of Yusuke's existence for Saeko, now Saeko is a vestige of
Kazu's existence for Miki.
Speaking of things that
grew on me, the ending theme song "Azalea" by Kenshi Yonezu didn't
leave a strong impression on me for a quite a while, but it's one of my
jams now!
And as much as I've belabored the
more harmful aspects of Saeko and Yusuke's relationship, on screen it
doesn't read nearly as egregiously as I'm making it sound. Rather,
'Beyond Goodbye' is masterful at conveying the experience of two people
developing a connection that's so sudden and strange and
not-quite-logical, and yet is so strong that it eclipses everything
else. Saeko actually experiences this twice, with Yusuke and
then with Kazu/Yusuke inside Kazu. Kazu genuinely loves his wife, he and Saeko are genuine friends at
first, and their emotional affair is basically the least scandalous affair imaginable because
we see how vulnerable they
are and how they literally can't help being drawn to each other given
the circumstances. Theirs is a true conflict of the heart.
Best: There's this heartwarming, almost tear-worthy motif involving Saeko,
Yusuke, Kazu, the piano in the Hawaii airport lounge, and the Jackson
5's "I Want You Back" that the show keeps returning to, and I'll refrain
from detailing it because it must be witnessed in order to be properly
felt. But my goodness! It's such an inventive way to anchor together
Yusuke's love for Saeko, Saeko's grief-induced desperation to grasp for
remnants of Yusuke wherever she recognizes them, and the memory
transfer that Kazu experiences.
And talk about BUDGET! Shot on location in Japan and Hawaii (and New Zealand, according to the series finale end credits), with seamless editing and the most gorgeous wide shots of nature you've ever seen. In episode 5 there's a shot of a bunch of green mountains with a blue sky above them that's so striking that when I saw it I audibly gasped, paused the show, and snapped a photo of my laptop screen with my phone. 'Beyond Goodbye' is beyond visually crisp and inviting.
Honorable Mention: ワンダフルライフ (Wonderful Life/After Life) - 1998
After Life
focuses on a facility where the souls of the newly dead spend
a week before moving on to the great beyond. During their week at the
facility (a huge, dated, but well-maintained office complex), each guest
has three days to come up with a meaningful, precious, impactful, or
otherwise important memory that they want to collaborate with the staff to recreate on film. Those who don't select a memory in time stay behind and become
part of
the staff, either at this facility or other facilities like it elsewhere
in Japan. The newly dead arrive on a Monday. They must pick a memory by
Wednesday.
Filming occurs on Friday, with a group screening on Saturday. Everyone watches all
the films
together in a small auditorium, and the guests magically disappear from their seats by
the time the house lights come back on. I assume the staff
have a day to themselves on Sunday, before the whole process begins
again
with a new batch of people once it's Monday again. This particular week features 22 guests, and the main conflict of the film involves
the staff attempting to coax decisions out of the few holdouts. These
holdouts include a 21-year-old man who refuses to choose, a 71-year-old
man who
would like to choose but can't think of anything, and an
elderly woman who barely talks because she decided to regress to her bashful 9-year-old self before she died.
Meanwhile, one of the staff (a protagonist played by Iura Arata) has a
crisis when he realizes that he and
the 71-year-old man have a mutual connection from the past.
I was so impressed by After Life's
refusal to assign moral judgments
to the guests, especially regarding what they did in life and what they
want for their reproduced memories. The staff might side-eye a request
or be baffled by a guest's behavior, but they don't
condemn anyone. They're more like a hybrid of
social workers/customer service people/filmmakers than judges, so the
real or
perceived goodness of the guests is irrelevant. Even the idea of heaven or hell is pushed aside; when a
young man asks a staff member about what type of people get sent here
during his intake interview, the staff member replies that
everyone who dies comes through this place, no matter if they were "bad"
or "good" in life. And guests have resources at their disposal; in this
world, tapes of key life events exist for each year of a person's life
and can be accessed upon request. This detail made me wonder why the
staff wouldn't simply show guests videos of what actually happened, so
they can relive their memories that way instead of going through the effort of performatively reenacting them? But then I realized
something, and I believe director Kore-eda Hirokazu is asserting this idea about the
nature of memory itself: complete accuracy is neither possible, nor is
it always desirable. For example, a staff member gently confronts a
woman about how the timeline of her memory doesn't add up, and she
concedes that she embellished certain parts, but the staff member still
lets her reenact that memory as she prefers to remember it. In another
instance, the 71-year-old man is shown tapes of his life to help him
brainstorm, and rather than gaining inspiration for his scene, he's perplexed at how his life wound up so
passionless and unfulfilled. The allowance given to that woman, and the
disappointment of that elderly man, reinforce the point that the entire
operation is meant to send people off to the next phase with something positive to hold onto, and too much realism would detract from that.
My
understanding was that after viewing their films and disappearing from
their seats, these people's souls move on to the unknown next phase of
the afterlife, only carrying that one memory with them from their
earthly existence. A literal souvenir from one last thrill that the
facility staff helped make possible. But then I happened upon Winona
Ryder's Criterion Closet video where she described the premise of After Life
as people getting to live in that one memory forever, which would mean
that choosing a memory equates to choosing where they spend their
eternity. Having contemplated it more, I believe my interpretation
aligns more with true ambiguity of what comes after death. Additionally,
if this facility is a place where everyone's just passing through, it
makes more sense for the recreated memories to be fond experiences that
souls carry with them on their continued journey, rather than something
for them to get stuck in. Moreover, being trapped reliving the same
memory forever (no matter how beloved that memory is) sounds more like
eternal boredom or torment than peace to me. Nonetheless, me preferring my own interpretation doesn't make it superior, and the
fact that Winona and I had such differing understandings speaks to the
film's ability to capture viewers' imaginations and inspire diverse
avenues of thought.
'Beyond Goodbye' has the advantage of being freshest in my memory, but I still believe it's the best of all three J-dramas that I watched this time around. My next J-drama review definitely won't be coming until after the new year, but what will the roster for that review look like? You'll have to come back and find out!
