Wakatte Ite mo: The Shapes of Love (2024)

A respectable attempt at a remake, but misses the mark in some crucial ways.

The original Korean version of this story was already sort of short on actual substance. As a story it has very simple moving parts, and the engine that drives everything else is the magnetic fiery attraction between the ML and FL. It is the centerpiece of the drama. The Japanese version tamps down that fire, and lacks the same level of chemistry, which is a huge mistake, because it sucks what precious little substance there is right out of the story and leaves you feeling like you watched some empty avant garde show about nothing.

Sure there's some chemistry in the Japanese version, and the ML and FL look like they could share a nice wicked kiss in an elevator or something. But in the Korean version, the ML and FL look like they are always 3 seconds away from leaping over the table and attacking eachother right there on the floor. This is a CRUCIAL difference in the shows. The whole POINT of it is that the ML is a player, and the FL makes him completely unable to be impartial or emotionally divorced from their insane attraction. She knocks him off his game, and he tries to hide that from her. Whereas in the Japanese version, the ML feels enigmatic and calculating, smooth and controlled. His eyes don't have that wild dark animal look for her. What he looks like is a womanizer who finds that the FL tugs at his heartstrings. That's a totally different dynamic, and one that doesn't work for this story.

So we have two totally different ML's. And we also have two totally different FL's -- In the Korean version, the FL is capable of seeing her world through the glasses of realism and caution, but at the end of the day she is a free spirit, and she is unconventional and independent. When she gives in to her attraction to the ML, it feels like she's liberating herself; shedding a restrictive part of herself that gives her pure relief and joy to take off... like she's flying. That's not the essence of the Japanese character's FL. When the Japanese FL gets together with the ML, it feels like she's driven by wild impulse that frightens her when she confronts it. She doesn't feel the sensation of flying, she feels the sensation of vertigo. She worries, she becomes insecure, she doubts herself and doubts him.

I can see how they tried to create a good artistic take on the original, but you can't make a story that's supposed to be about a wild powerful intense attraction, and then dial down the actual attraction between the ML and FL and expect to faithfully recreate the story. The Japanese version is "sexy" but that's not enough for this story. It needs pure fire to drive it, or else it loses its original meaning.

And what stylist dressed these actors, it's completely god-awful.

Korean version = better version

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Emotions and their parallel to art: shaping love and searching for a ‘forever’ through sculpture

"How does one become such a great artist?" — "How do you define great?" — "To stand the test of time." — "I wonder if forever exists."

Artistic, pensive, beautifully crafted, and unique in its cinematographic ways—‘Wakatte Ite mo: The Shapes of Love’ explores the vulnerability of struggling, waiting, hoping, and loving. It perfectly portrays the essence of human nature and captures love in its many different shapes under a refreshingly realistic light. It represents these themes through art in a mature and abstract manner, much like the concept of humanity and love itself.

In a world where "there is nothing more uncertain than a person's heart," the story follows the lives of artists who create art driven by their inspiration and their desire to create their own sense of forever. They are ready to put aside their usual composure and values in order to seek the heart of their loved one. For example, Kosaka Ren, the male lead, wants forever but acts in the opposite manner; however, his constant changes in girlfriends are his way of experiencing it and surrounding himself with the beauty of new beginnings. Another lead, Osakabe, thinks it's bad to act on lust, yet his world melts the second he sees his crush’s smile. Lastly, there is Ikushima Ruki, who wants to be with his crush but lets her be with another if it means gaining her trust and friendship first.

Ultimately, the series perfectly encapsulated the original webteeon’s overall message, reinforcing it with scenes and lines that portray its message more explicitly instead of requiring heavy analyses like it was for the webtoon’s Korean adaptation; ‘Nevertheless,’. The shortened run time allowed the leads’ journey to be explored more thoroughly without weighing down the whole series with its heaviness. Additionally, the poetic and inspirational narration made it easier to grasp its concept and allowed for a more direct interpretation of the webtoon’s work—keeping its core themes but casting aside tropes that don’t add to its main focal point.

Through Hamasaki Miu’s eyes, the female lead, Ren is the butterfly—beautiful, attractive, light, and seemingly free—giving her the illusion that he has it easy. The series adds a new meaning to the significance of butterflies: they are thought to be a symbol of freedom, but actually, they just fly the same paths over and over. Maybe the best thing they can do is just enjoy the ride. This goes for both of them because they are both like butterflies, or at least, they both try to carry the essence of butterflies by capturing their fleeting beauty through art. When Ren finds Miu, he wishes to metaphorically capture her, who is like a butterfly to him, but one who hasn't opened its wings yet.

Ren wants to approach her, mostly out of self-interest, intrigued by how she expresses her inner-feelings through art without fear, but also because of a certain fate-like pull that builds up following their many coincidental meetings. However, he is a playboy by nature—flirty and manipulative. He seems more curious about how far he himself is willing to go or devote to her rather than the other way around, not caring about her reactions and staying consistent in the attention that he devotes to her.

His push and pull plays with her emotions; his stance in his affection towards her grounded in unsteady terrain, teetering her back and forth into the territory of hopefulness and then desperation. This constant shift in Miu’s emotions highlights the overall theme of the series, which is that she can't help but hope even if she knows things will come to an end or leave a scar. Nevertheless, Ren constantly ignites these feelings of hope within her, making her want to reach out and seal the faith of their relationship—an impulsive act that mirrors his own tendency to act on impulse.

Kosaka Ren is a rather peculiar character. Since he is not good at sharing his feelings, he uses art to communicate them. Even we, as viewers, don't know him quite well and have been misguided by him many times with deceptions based on what we do see from him. For example, we don't know if whenever he picks up a call, it's his girlfriend. He never clarifies misunderstandings. In the last episode, “I couldn't succeed in becoming the most important person in her life” is a line said in his narration while the screen presents a note his mother left saying she'd be absent for lunch. This shows how he doesn't have commitment issues as is suggested throughout the whole series, but rather that he blames himself for the constant departures of the people around him in his life.

He's not the butterfly who comes and goes, but the others around him are, flocking to his beauty like butterflies do to flowers. “Gradually, I got used to giving people what they expected of me.” Ren only mirrors what those around him feel and how they act. He does this because he wants to avoid experiencing pain or loss, and whenever he declines their proposals, or finds himself wanting more, he always ends up getting hurt. And so, he chooses to follow the same paths over and over again like a butterfly with everyone around him, trying to please each one of them while looking for a piece of his own self through their eyes—which he eventually finds in Miu and soon enough, catches himself searching for her instead of his own self.

Through this endless cycle, he says he ended up losing his identity. He essentially became a canvas of however one sees him, having different versions of himself through different pairs of eyes, like a piece of art. Like someone interpreting a sculpture, Miu, as well as everyone else, can interpret him, what he says, his actions, and what is and isn’t known about him in their own way. Through Ren, who is like a sculpture, Miu hopes to find her forever. And through her, he sees yet again another chance to find his true meaning and define who he really is despite his traumas and past experiences in life. This is essentially why he leads on and makes so many people try to fall in love with him—because he wants to find the one, his true self, and his forever.

It is said by Miu’s toxic ex boyfriend that the female lead's wings are tied down, leaving only her thoughts to wander. However, there’s another interpretation suggested in the series: that her wings are rather too heavy to go forward—not tied down by external forces and submitted to others, as her ex had suggested through his sculptures of her falling to the ground and begging him to stay—but perhaps heavy because of the weight of their worth and hope, waiting for their reason to take flight in a world that keeps letting her down. The female lead, whose name means "beautiful wings," beautifully encapsulates this struggle of waiting for hope; hope that ultimately introduces itself in her life through the male lead.

From the very beginning of the series, during their first encounter, Ren recognizes this wait for hope of hers through her pleas for her boyfriend to stay. Instead of perceiving her pleas as a desperate and hopeless attempt of begging for something long gone, he sees that all she wants is to hold a promise of a future with someone, and that she has hope for something more than what she already has.

There are a lot of similarities that the female and male lead share—their fear of abandonment, their wish to freeze a loved one’s heart in time and gain a forever happy side by side with them, and their struggles in finding what they want in life. Though Ren doesn’t express his struggles and desires aloud like Miu does, he addresses them through his fiery art, which tells another story from the nonchalant version of himself that is presented through his character and the aloof image that he lets on—reserved, quiet, and who lets other people make things up and narrate his life.

Despite their seemingly stark contrast, both faces of himself that he puts out into the world stem from the thoughts and emotions. His art paints a strong image of resilience, longing desire, and determination in pursuing one’s desires—emotions that give him the impression of being lost and left with nothing but wavering emotions. In real life, these feelings of his manifest through his calm composure that radiates a sense of aloofness and indifference.

This overwhelming desire to find the key to freedom and his true self drives him to act like the playboy type, not knowing who to love or dedicate himself to. His art, on the other hand, portrays his sense of lostness as something fiery and bright and that drives him to maddening lengths, putting him in a fight against society’s typical representation of love and relationships, and forcing him to confront his true feelings.

Ren, in a way, relates to Miu and sees himself in the scene before his eyes, where he sees her for the first time. Through his eyes, witnessing her meltdown opens a window of opportunity. Ren likes to capture that happiness in the brief flutter of color in his world, like a butterfly, so he’s drawn to her strong personality and wants to capture the beauty that lies in the most beautiful and intense human emotion, which is love. From that moment on, he tries to draw that emotion out of her by making her fall for him. He does the same for other girls when he flirts, all to satisfy his somewhat selfish desires to only have a portrait of pairs of loving gazes around him so that he’s surrounded by beauty. At the same time, through this tactic of his, he gets attention from the opposite gender, mirroring his mom’s absence in his life.

Even if Ren’s actions can be perceived as stemming out of selfishness, his supposed attraction to her is also beneficial to Miu because he wants to awaken this strong, powerful, and beautiful feeling of love within her. He wants to make her wings flutter and for her beauty to be set free by expressing her emotions instead of restraining them and staying tied to the past that she’s stuck in. This is vividly illustrated when he guides her to smash the sculpture where she’s begging for her ex to stay. But her perspective of it contradicts his own: he sees her beauty through that sculpture; nothing bad and submissive about it, but instead, brave for not being scared to reach out and try to grasp what she truly wanted—something he doesn’t know how to dedicate himself to doing.

Similarly, just like how Miu struggled to be freed from her painful last moments with her toxic ex that had been frozen in time both metaphorically and literally, Ren also wishes to be freed from his own struggles. For him, the butterfly doesn't represent something light and nonchalant and non-troubled as Miu had suggested, but is rather representative of a small precious thing that tries to navigate through the harsh and turbulent-winded world with its colorful yet light-weighed wings. His desire for freedom and his little efforts to cast a ray of colour in the world manifests itself through his obsession with butterflies. These insects are a recurring motif throughout the series, not only symbolizing change and growth but of which are also a statement of the short-lived but beautiful flutters that can be seen when one pushes through hardships and keeps on flying.

Furthermore, butterflies aren’t the only metaphorical symbol that has been included to better convey the story’s message to viewers. One of Ren’s characterics is the way rainstorms always follow him. These scenes in the rain with Miu hold a greater meaning than just being a rainy day. Despite his messiness, he serves as something stable in Miu’s life, like an anchor among the countless possibilities she has to navigate and the decisions she has to make as she enters adulthood. Since she feels like she doesn't really know herself and has trouble finding the answer to anything when it comes to being subjective, this inevitable journey she’ll have to face stresses her out. Ren’s strong attraction for her never ceases in its intensity, and in this, she finds a harbor in her life.

By diving into the complexities of human emotions, relationships, and the unpredictability of attraction, the series conveys the message that some things just can't be helped. The leads’ imperfect relationship is threaded with flaws and raw with hidden insecurities. The magic in their chemistry lies in the delicate yet profound interactions they share, and the space between them constantly grows wider and smaller, full of hidden meaning and unspoken words. ‘Wakatte Ite mo: The Shapes of Love’ portrays romance as something realistically hurtful and messy, and exemplifies how love is not something that is bound to be constrained to limits. It is everything but simple or straight out of a fairytale. Instead, it is a love story using its own words—not sticking to convenience for the sake of its principal aspect of romance despite the numerous physically intimate scenes.

The show’s beauty lies in its unique perspective and outlook on life that it sheds through this window of two young adults trying their best to navigate their lives. Even though we may lie to ourselves or convince ourselves otherwise, nevertheless is a word that defines us all. Our overbearing desire to act freely against others’ rules and against our own will is the human nature of our essence here on earth. "If you just label yourself as something, it'll just restrict you." is a line pulled from the series that encapsulates its essence, defining how there is beauty to be found in the unknown. As the title suggests, the shape of love looks different for everyone, just like one emotion can be represented through many different sculptures and hold different interpretations through each individual's eyes.

The series is tied up beautifully, its last scene especially goosebump-inducing—Ren knows that forever doesn't exist, and Miu knows that she shouldn't hold out for hope, but nevertheless, they come together and discover that the shape of forever is simply holding on to hope.

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An adaptation of the original Nevertheless but with a different vibe and anticipated changes.

Everyone says this is the infamous Nevertheless remake but really it's not 100%.

One major difference is that the ML is NOT a student but a subtitute teaching assistant. That changes the relationship dynamics portrayed.
The FL is not blinded by love like Nabi in nevertheless but more like she is lost, so does the ML. You don't get to feel that much toxicity here but more like mature adults who are very lost.

The characters are indeed based on the original Kdrama but they all give off different vibes and feelings. There is the lesbian couple but they are not really like the ones in the og. The other couple is also similar in some way.

The aesthetics and everything in this drama is exactly the Japanese type but with insipiration and elements from the original story, and as the saying goes this drama is very aesthetically pleasant!

overall, a decent drama so far. Concluded decently as well.

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Series Ends Really Well

I liked this drama. Ren is a brilliant artist who pretty much has decided he will not be hurt by the disappointments of life especially of a person leaving him. He had a selfish mother who only cared for her own needs and he internalized that by fulfilling his need with women as objects and not even trying to get to have anything real intimately with anyone except his childhood friend, Chiki. Ren is called back to his old alma mater for an art seminar and he meets Miu. Miu is struggling with her latest sculpture. She has sworn off relationships after her boyfriend dumps her unceremoniously. She falls for Ren immediately knowing it will most likely lead to heartache. Ren is not willing to give of himself fully and Miu finally realizes she deserves better than that!

Episode 8 is 30 minutes of some of the best TV I've seen this year. Things wrapped up rather nicely and we see Ren's humanity and humility finally. The scene with his mother was really good. I wanted a bit more but what she tells him made sense b/c as selfish as she has been his whole life she still loves him. Ren kind of gets the catharsis he needs by accepting his mother as she is. I also liked that Miu finally gets it! He ask her if she will have regrets if they get back together and she said exactly what she should have!!

What I loved about the series is the cast is really good and I mean everyone but especially Yokohama Ryusei. I have never seen him in anything else and now I want to see his other work. Minami Sara is an actress to watch for me as well. I like her a lot.

I have not watched the Korean series so I have no comparisons to make but I do plan to watch soon.

12/30/24

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Eccentric and Perception.

Artists tend to be eccentric persons with unique abilities to convey feelings without words or actions. It is a way to preserve an emotion, an event and thoughts with their creations. This drama emulates just that, the different characters had different passions and they were very different from each other. They've valued what or who was most important to them and displayed it, beautifully. The drama showed the different emotions and their complexities. Many would find it boring and the slowburn was waste of time. However, if one just analyse each episode , study the events and understand the feelings behind them, there would be a great appreciation for the series.

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Beautiful and Impact Full Emphsis on Human Emotions, Art and Their Co-relation.

"Creating things is the desire to embody the feelings of the moment and maintain it forever. Everything will disappear one day. But the desire to hold onto them forever will never subside as long as you are alive. You still have that desire right?"

I feel as if people may not like this version because they loved the fiery attraction between the main leads in the Korean version and attraction is not the main focus here.
It is specifically the emphasis on art, characters' emotions, and the impact of emotions on art that makes this version much more likable for me.
We actually get to see Ren's growth along with the other characters as people and as artists and therefore Mui's and Ren's relationship makes so much sense here. This version isn't just about an f boy and a naive girl and their relationship. This is about presenting characters as real people and artists with real struggles and how they try their best to overcome them. All of this, along with the phenomenal cinematography makes this a solid 9/10 for me. This may not have stayed true to the OG but that is why re-makes are important. To present possibilities within an existing storyline.

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Considero que esta versión está mejor

No he leído el webtoon, solo vi nevertheless cuando estaba en emisión. Esta versión me gusta porque mantiene la historia sin perder la esencia y estilo de los dramas japoneses. Esta versión tiene muchas diferencias con la versión coreana que considero mucho mejor.

El personaje principal masculino (Ren), aquí se puede ver de manera mas clara la razón por la cual él vive de esa manera. Plantean el hecho que nunca se sintió amado por su madre, y que así como las mariposas se acercaban a él, asimismo se alejaban; alegando que así mismo eran las personas. Su perspectiva cambia al verla a ella. Esta versión maneja mucho mejor la relación de ellos dos.

No hay mucho relleno, ni peleas innecesarias entre los personajes secundarios que si le daban ese toque a la historia. Tampoco vemos a una protagonista ser continuamente regañada por su superior sino más bien le brindaban apoyo para esta seguir haciendo arte.

Esta versión es más trágica y realista, porque muestra lo dura que puede ser la vida.. las personas naturalmente son imperfectas y aunque sean buenas en ciertas cosas, es difícil no sentir alguna emoción negativa o sentimiento de insatisfacción. En esta versión pude empatizar mucho más con él, porque proyectan a un chico frío pero con heridas causadas en su entorno familiar.

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Neverthless, an empty person needs someone who can fill their emptiness.

For anyone wondering about this drama, give it a go. I can assure that you won't be a disappointed. Dramas like this represents us, the real people who aren't perfect.

Talking about this drama, I am happy that this Japanese version is not the exact copy of Korean one. The characters were flawed but not toxic. Unlike the korean version, the ML was not a red flag and FL was not dumb. They had their growth as person and artist. Besides them, all the other characters in this drama felt real. Their reality of trying not to feel empty. The only let down for me was the character named Chaiki. Personally, I didn't feel the need for that character. To me, it felt kind of forced.

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This version > the korean one

Everything about this is better than the kr version, the deep parts (specifically about the ml) that were missing in the previous version are now showed.
The characters actually feels like adults, the way the story is presented is way more mature and artistic (the main point of the show) here. I think that instead on focusing on the romance/mess, this adaption shows life and people in a realistic way that was needed.
Despite it being shorter, it present way more, and has again way more depth than the other series.
I think that people should let go of the image of the "toxic romance" that the show is represented as and focus more on the story itself.

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Nevertheless, I still like it...

This drama initially raised my concerns due to the red flag male mc, but its exceptional execution won me over. The director and writer skillfully focused on human connection over romance, tempering sensuality. Each character received proper portion, showcasing their own "nevertheless".Despite the limited episodes, the storytelling effectively explored complexities. Ryusei Yokohama's outstanding performance evoked sympathy & frustration, but also made us understand why Miu is so attached to him. Although the ending was a little too happy for me, the 'okaeri' and 'tadaima' really gave poignant conclusion.

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