Jen reminded me about this one. We’re both big fans of Satoh Takeru of Rurouni Kenshin fame, so when “First Love” appeared on Netflix, I gave it a shot even though rom-coms are not generally my jam. I’m not sure I would even say that Satoh is a great actor. He’s good, but not great; I always have this sensation of distance while watching him, like I’m watching Satoh playing Satoh playing the character. However, I would say he’s an incredibly charismatic *person*, and so I end up wanting to keep watching him do his thing, whatever that is. A little bit like Tom Cruise, I think, though I’m not a Cruise fan; I feel like Satoh is cut from the same cloth as an actor.
Anyway, now I’m wincing at the prospect of trying to describe why I liked “First Love,” other than Satoh, because the plot is so cringey. SPOILERS AHEAD, It’s an amnesia plot. Yep. Yae and Harumichi are high-school sweethearts, the bad boy and the prom queen (or its Hokkaido equivalent). They dream of becoming a pilot and a flight attendant respectively and manage to keep it together through their separate transitions to the military and to college. But then a fight leads to a tragic car accident that robs Yae of her memories of their relationship, and Haru, who blames himself, gets deployed before he can make things right. From there, life’s currents sweep them into separate channels for 20 years before a chance reconnection in Sapporo (I think; the show’s a little vague on the location of its urban settings) provides Haru with a chance to rewrite their history with a happy ending this time.
What I would keep: A lot, as it turns out. Despite its overworked tropes, the performances and vibe kept me on the hook.
- The show’s rich, lo-fi tone: The story jumps back and forth between the 90s and the 2010s at least once if not multiple times per episode, and the simultaneously saturated and slightly over-exposed cinematography–and the 90s J-pop–weave a strong thread of nostalgia that helps hold the show together.
- The jaw-dropping beauty of the rural Hokkaido settings: I’m partial to Hokkaido, but I think this would work for anyone. The sweeping fields, flowering trees, blue skies, dramatic mountains, and otherworldly snowscapes are prettier than the leads, and that’s saying something.
- The way the double timelines are managed: Seriously, they manage to maintain the mystery of why Yae doesn’t seem to remember Haru when they meet cute (again) through nearly half the series. By then you’re so invested in Haru winning Yae back that the amnesia reveal feels more heartbreaking than trite.
- The supporting cast: This is really what saves the show from being stupid. From Yae’s son who blows off his pre-med studies to write dance tracks for the Instagram star he spies on at night at the office building where Haru works as a security guard (this is how Haru and Yae reconnect); to Haru’s crazily warm and diverse family decked out in their Hokkaido Fighters jerseys; to Yae’s bookend pair of mothers–protective working-class mom and judgmental rich mother-in-law; the rich relational context gave me something to hold onto when the central romantic relationship faltered.
Which it did…. Jen and I both agreed that Episode 9 is where it went off the rails: I think we both scooted forward on the couch and yelled, “What?!” at the television and then immediately texted each other. So, here’s what I would change:
- The amnesia thing. Honestly, I don’t think the show needs it. I think in all our lives enough realistic obstacles pile up over 20 years to the potential rekindling of any first loves that we don’t need to sandbag the situation. For example, the fight Yae and Haru have over her liberal college friends snobbery toward him when he visits on leave from the SDF, and her failure to defend him, is realistic, savage, and heartbreaking enough on its own; in it, we fully feel the way life is pulling them apart against their wills. And again when they meet again in the future, Haru has washed out of piloting due to a bad back and has a fiancée; Yae, meanwhile, is broke, humiliated, and depressed after divorcing her wealthy husband and losing custody of her kid to her poisonous in-laws. That’s enough to overcome without the deus ex machina of the amnesia. Now, it’s true there are all those poignant apology letters that Haru writes to Yae after the fight, which her mom intercepts because she doesn’t want Yae to remember Haru and end up as she did–running off with an adventurer who will get her pregnant and dump her. But we could still keep the letters without the laughable conceit that somehow they are the only thing that would restore Yae’s memories of Haru. And getting rid of the amnesia trope would solve SO many other leaps of logic and inconsistencies that plague the end of the series, like….
- The scene that made Jen and me shout at the TV, which plays out in Ep. 9. Haru has at last broken up with his financée, and Yae has finally remembered Haru, and she invites him to the café where they first had Napolitan together to confess…and he just gazes mournfully at her through the window (which she somehow doesn’t notice) and then walks away and leaves Japan. I’m sorry, WHAT? The sheer illogic infuriates on its own, but it doubles when you realize you can practically *see* the writers’ room scrambling to figure out how to throw a final dogleg into the leads’ journey to happiness so they could drag out the drama for another 2 episodes. Lazy. Awful. Needs to GO.
- The series ending is no great shakes, either. Yae and Haru end up running a private little air service in Iceland together where he’s the pilot and she’s the flight attendant. Yep, you read that right, Iceland. I think the writers just did that b/c it was a popular destination for Japanese tourism at the time, like Spain was for Koreans a few years prior (cf. “Memories of the Alhambra,” “The K2,” etc.). I just…can’t with that ending. If they do get together, which I fully realize is the expectation in this genre, it needs to happen more believably and organically. But honestly, I think it would be a better ending, and would honor the rich, complex writing that characterized the first half of the series better, for them *not* to end up together. IMHO Haru needs to realize that his attachment to Yae wasn’t about her but about all his unfulfilled fantasies (to make amends, to recover from his back injury and start piloting again, to be the good guy for once); meanwhile, Yae needs to stop valuing herself against other people’s standards (society’s, her terrible in-laws’, her son’s, her absent dad’s, Haru’s). I’d like to see the leads remain friends and lean on that support to realize their dreams independently: him as a pilot or a high-school teacher, maybe, b/c he’s great with kids; her as a restaurant owner (b/c she’s a great cook) or a travel agent, or heck, a flight attendant if that’s what she really wants for herself and not just what her society told her pretty girls should grow up to do. The letter trope could reenter at that point as a nice callback to clue us in about these developments and to give us a sense of closure. After all, you don’t have to stick with your first love for it to stick with you.
The Rookery 