Orange Days is a Japanese drama series based around the lives of college students. There’s Kai Yuuki (Satoshi Tsumabaki), a senior studying social welfare, and his group of friends (Hiroki Narimiya and Eita). They’re a tight-knit group, hanging out whenever possible, and just generally having fun. Kai is in the middle of applying for jobs, however, and this is stressing him out. One day he sees a young woman named Sae playing the violin near the school. He gives her an orange. Sae, however princess-like she may look, is all full of attitude, fragile emotions, and complexities. A few years ago, she went deaf, and it’s only recently that she’s gotten back to her normal life. The show is then about their complicated relationship.

I would like to mainly focus on just one aspect of Orange Days (though I’m sure I’ll end up mentioning a lot of stuff anyway): how it shows the time of your life when you start to love someone more than your own family, who means something completely different to you and can give you a completely different sort of happiness.

There’s a moment late in the series where Sae’s mom tells Kai he has no business meddling with Sae’s health issues, since he’s a stranger. It’s an understandable attitude coming from a mother. She’s worried about Sae, and she sees this boy Kai as relatively unimportant in the scheme of things. But what we’ve learned throughout the show is that Kai is not just a stranger. In fact, to Sae, he’s become her most important person. She has her friend Akane who she can talk to, sure, but when it comes to Kai, it’s different. There’s a great conversation in the show where Sae talks about what she imagines her future to be like, and in every scenario, Kai is there. The series is largely about the crucial time when the bonds and friendships you’re going to have for the rest of your life are created; it’s something different than your family, because this is something that you created yourself.

It’s something that’s inevitable. We each create our own world, separate from our parents at some point during our life. One of the key struggles for Sae is trying to figure out how to deal with her loyalty and love for her mother (and respecting her feelings) while still trying to be true to her own heart and do what she wants to do. In a sense, these thoughts and feelings are a little selfish. We must come to the conclusion that our happiness is what matters the most, and to seek that will mean forgoing some other person’s idea of happiness. Sae tries to go along with her mom’s vision of her happiness, because she’s trying to be a good daughter and she respects all the sacrifices that her mom had to make because of Sae’s illness. But it is not her happiness. Kai, the one who can make her laugh, the one who can make her cry, the one who can make her feel like “just a girl.” In Orange Days, Sae and Kai change each other’s lives, they motivate each other to keep trying hard, they hurt each other deeply; no one else could do those things for them. So when Sae’s mom calls Kai a stranger, the audience immediately knows that she is wrong. Who else could Sae share her fears, her insecurities, her tears, other than with the one she truly loves? No one could provide the same comfort, the same assurance that he could.

Most love stories are about this, in the end. But they rarely affect me with the same power as Orange Days does. Perhaps it’s because I relate more to the college setting, the level of maturity and self-awareness of the characters that this strikes me as the best Asian drama series I’ve ever seen. Most of these shows are fun, charming, and all that, but it’s very rare that I find one that I think has beauty and grace. It’s a show that dares you to become a better person. After watching Kai and Sae try their best to find their happiness, it’s up to us to go forward and seek out our own.

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One of the characters of Flower Boy Next Door, Oh Jin Rak (Kim Ji-hoon), a cranky cartoon artist, has had a crush on his neighbor, Go Dok Mi (Park Shin Hye), for several years now. She is more or less a shut-in, hiding away from the world, pining for the man across the street, who she regularly (innocently) peeps on. She’s damaged and has taken to trying to avoid others in case they hurt her. So Jin Rak watches her from a distance, anonymously leaving cute little notes on her milk carton everyday, all while sorta trying to protect her.

In K-Drama, there always exists a 2nd male lead character who, although impossibly nice and perfect, never gets the girl and basically ends up alone at the end (the most famous example being that one dude from Boys Over Flowers). The rude jerk who’s the lead usually gets her. Flower Boy subverts this by having Jin Rak be lovably grumpy, and Enrique (the main lead) be sweet and good-natured. But, Jin Rak still remains the second lead. The thing is that Jin Rak never even really seems to be in the running. For most of the series, although he’s with Go Dok Mi fairly frequently, he mostly observes her. He’s not involved.But what I think this show does, more than other ones, is argue that Jin Rak’s position, his approach, is completely wrong. The show becomes an argument against the second lead.

The tragedy of Flower Boy Next Door is that Jin Rak, although a good guy, remains forever on the outside looking in. He treats the object of his romantic affection as someone beyond his reach – he puts her on a pedestal. To him, Go Dok Mi is like a weak animal he must protect, and although it comes from a good place, he never truly sees her as a “woman.” She remains an ideal that’s unreachable. There actually comes a point in the series where Oh Jin Rak actually tells her that he doesn’t need her to change, that he likes her just the way she is.

In essence, he is more witness than participant. Although he tries to throw his hat in the ring as a potential suitor, Jin Rak is never really sufficiently involved in Go Dok Mi’s life. Most of his relationship and knowledge of her come from the observations he’s made about her, not from actually interacting with her. There are even some scenes where the only thing that Jin Rak can actually do is helplessly watch as something happens to Go Dok Mi. Who is he to step in, for example, when someone else takes her away to the beach? What can he do?

His problem is that his love precludes the possibility of a true connection. By telling her that it’s okay that she stays in her apartment all the time, he says that the status quo is okay, that he’s happy with just being her neighbor, as long as she stays where she is; maybe with time she’ll come to care about him. But that isn’t what Go Dok Mi needs in her life. Her pain isn’t going to be soothed by just hiding out. She’s flawed and has been hurt and she’s never gotten quite over it. Jin Rak, although he loves her, never challenges her, never calls her out on her crap – his love doesn’t encompass those things.

So when another guy comes along and pushes Go Dok Mi to leave her apartment, to smile, to live, all Jin Rak can do is watch. And it’s this that made the series seem so heartbreaking at points. All he can do is be a witness to Go Dok Mi’s gradual return to the outside world. He watches her knowing full well that her smile isn’t for him, and that this new glow that she seems to possess isn’t because of him either. None of it is his. And he must live with it.

copied/pasted from www.thenextthingblog.wordpress.com

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