There is so much to praise about this production. In particular the cinematography and soundtrack are outstanding. The acting is good, the characters are appealing but the requisite sparkle, which can only spring from a really great script with insightful dialogue, was lacking. It’s not that it was bad, rather that it was ordinary and it wouldn’t have been so noticeable if the rest of the production hadn’t really shone.

The beginning in particular requires patience. If you need to be instantly captivated, forget this one. At the start it was pretty fragmented with nothing much to grab the attention. When you start writing a novel you can usually just dump the first two chapters because they are about writing yourself into the story and the first couple of episodes have that sort of feel. But persistence at this point will pay off in the end.

For the first third, many of the scenes are very short and there isn’t really enough personal interaction to pull you into the depth of the characters or reveal their uniqueness. The dialogue is sometimes quite fanciful and self-consciously poetic and is not always in keeping with the character speaking it. Time and effort is spent with the soundtrack and cinematography which would be better heaped on the relationship interactions. Imo, you need to engage the viewer with your characters from the get-go, then there will be time later for more emphasis on production values. There is not much to hold onto at the start and as a viewer I had to do a lot of work to generate the emotional connections. But later on it pays dividends as the actors slowly reveal the inner world of their characters.

I was not always convinced of the connection between the younger and older versions of the characters and it didn’t help that the actors playing the young versions, didn’t really resemble the actors playing the older ones. And neither did their character traits feel properly aligned. This is the fault of the director (who also wrote the script) as presumably the casts from different time periods didn’t meet each other on set.

Ok having said all that, let’s get into what was great about this drama.

Once used to it, I loved the interweaving of the past and present. The past shed light on the present and vice-versa and it was cleverly done by the author. At the start I was a little confused but soon settled into the structure of it. Memory loss again… which this time was put to good use and if it wasn’t such a hackneyed and clichéd trope I would have enjoyed the role it played here more. It was less of a plot device and more of an emotional device to create an unfolding of intimacy.

The soundtrack is something special, very thoughtful and inventive. There are so many different songs, many of them in English and the use of Bach’s theme from the Goldberg Variations is so poignant.

Beautiful cinematography. With a rich, deep, saturated colour palette in sombre blues and greys. Blue is the signature colour that runs throughout particularly in the clothes and the lighting. Replete with a liberal sprinkling of exquisite compositional set shots using carefully selected colour, form and space. There was also a clever use of aerial and space imagery and an absolutely stunning dance sequence.

The best performances came from Mitsushima Hikari and Satoh Takeru who added a depth of poignancy to the interactions that produced some beautifully moving moments. Overall, this is well worth watching and will leave you with a sweet taste in your mouth.

What my rating means: 8+ A great drama with interesting content and good writing, direction, acting, OST, cinematography. But didn’t quite have the requisite sparkle to bump it into my all-time fave list. Worth watching.