First Love: Hatsukoi (2022)

Pleasantly Surprised

I really enjoyed this beautiful love story of soul mates who fall in love as teenagers and lose track of each other into their adult years. It had me from the very first episode, very well-written and just a joy to watch the highly talented cast. When tragedy strikes, I was afraid the show would fall into a cliche plot, but it kept its dignity and sailed to a satisfactory end, despite the slow parts in the plot midway. I loved the slow burn of the first episode. There was an intimate sweetness portrayed so wonderfully by the young actors that they won me over completely.

There are a few things I would have liked fleshed out. Perhaps a tete-a-tete between mother and daughter after everything transpires. The talk on how her mother's over-proctective attitude basically changes the course of her life and affected her would have added some closure in that, at times, rocky relationship. The pace slows down a bit towards the middle but then picks up again. The ends wrap up much too nicely making her eventual healing a little implausible. I was still very pleased with this beautiful love story. I highly recommended it.

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For the million time I was deceived by the high rate

This drama was the worst ever
I couldn't push myself more to watch more than 03 episodes
Then I fast forward the episodes
The story was very slow pace
The events were disarranged
The plot was lame,boring and shallow
Sexual disgusting scenes literally with no need
And doesn't serve the story at all

The young couple
the FL acting was so bad

The directing was extremely bad and annoying
Jumping from present to past suddenly which make you confused
The flashbacks was disarranged
It took me a long time to figure out that the two couples (young and adults) were same but present and past
At the beginning I thought they were different couples in same period

Nothing encourages me to enjoy it even the comments or the high rates

Good luck for those who want to watch

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Cliche... pensive for like 5 minutes...

The whole memory loss thing... why do writers still use such overused, cliche plot events??

Sooo... she gets her memories back. And she's so chill about it? She doesn't tell anyone? (I HATE WHEN CHARACTERS DON'T TELL ANYONE ABOUT A HUGE LIFE CHANGE IN A SHOW!!! SO UNREALISTIC) She doesn't contact Harumichi or confront her mother. Also, Harumichi's a bit of a slimeball. Poor Tsunemi, she is forreal just cast aside. He uses then dumps her.

This obsession with first love in so many dramas is lowkey depressing... life is a bountiful and diverse experience, through one's youth to their death. Love and meaningful experiences can be found and had at any age. Some people find their person at 45, 50, 80... no need to put love in youth on a pedestal.

I did like how Harumichi was like are you going to full send and go after what you want from life, or follow life's tail wind? or whatever. I was like so true. So many tail wind moments. She just finds him in a small Iceland airport? Why do dramas always have such a rushed lazy ending? They're so slow with development the entire show then cram a ton of stuff into the last episode. Like pace yourself...

Tsuzuru's music bangs though.

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The Perfect Japanese Love Story

In three words: Do Not Miss. You Won't Regret. No plot spoilers: rest assured you may well be mesmerised by the impact of this masterpiece. Beautifully arranged with parallel timelines, necessary realism (sex scenes) in a few places, gentle emotive score and soundtrack, and 'less is more' editing, direction and acting across every aspect of this film. Allow yourself to be swept up across the storyline, and prepare to give your heart to the young lovers and their older counterparts. The thinking person's sex symbol, Mister Micro Expressions himself, Takeru Satoh, delivers a compelling role of profound masculine sensitivity and restrained passion that will define acting craftsmanship for years to come. Do real men cry? Yes, they do. If you are not familiar with Takeru and his body of acting work, do yourself a favour. Viewers may well hold their breath until most of the way into the last hour.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said: 'Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.' The same applies to this emotional masterpiece. It is the perfect length, story, acting and direction that will in time, define modern Japanese drama. You Will Love.

Personally, very few shows or films deserve near perfect ratings. This one kept your reviewer wondering until the very last 20 minutes, and provides deep thought for the remainder of the day.

All of us live with the question of 'what if...?" and this series explores what we do when the heart and mind open together.
Feel free to explore my other reviews to discover more exceptional Asian dramas. Thank you. ~Fumiyawagi

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LIFE IS FULL OF SPECIAL AND MEANINGFUL ENCOUNTERS !!!

It just left me speechless !!! I want to try to pour all my love for this show but I'm short of words 😭😭

This story had been told manytimes ,it's not something new but the beauty lies in the execution of this drama . screenplay ,performances ,music and notably cinematography were ideal and perfect !

I was witnessing the story that was happening infront of me for real .


NOTE: It is very simple ,ordinary and so real but that's life . some might find it repetitive and boring but for me it's one of those well made dramas which make you cry ,smile and root for the people in it . I repeat it's so perfect in every sense


I want to pour my love and can write like essays about it but right now I'm just numb and still tearing up 😭 cuz i just finished this

I don't know it make sense or not but I wanted to kill the FL's mother for real 😭😭😭 .She literally spoiled her daughter's life with her own hands .Though she did that with good deed but yeah .
I better stop it here ..... I just love love love the leads 😭 :(

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Emotional and beautiful

This was a story with so many emotional ups and downs, I kept crying and smiling at the same time. It was so heartening to see the leads as teenagers falling in love and looking super sweet together. While it was equally heartbreaking to see them separate due to circumstances, their encounter as grown ups was so cute at the laundromat when the ML sees her sleeping and keeps staring at her mesmerised and smiling! I loved all four actors, the ones that played the young leads and the ones that played grown up leads, but I’m slightly partial to the grown up ML Satoh Takeru since I like him a lot. This Japanese drama had very little of the surprised expressions that I find quite irritating about most Japanese dramas and the story didn’t look abrupt. On the contrary, it was a well thought out story with a blessed happy ending, my only regret is that we didn’t get to see the happy life of the leads together in the end, other than the one last scene in the aircraft.

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Charming high school days but not so much in the present

I'm not too sure what I was expecting when I started this drama, but I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by the portrayal of what pure young love is like. I kept bracing myself to cry buckets or for some horrible tragedy to strike (I guess I was thinking of 1 Litre of Tears haha), but I'm happy to report that you'll get many bittersweet moments instead and a happy ending.

Although I thoroughly enjoyed this drama, I have to say that were a few things that did bug me, which is why I didn't give it a full score.

1. I found myself looking forward to the high school flashbacks versus the present scenes:
This is one of the rare cases where I felt like the high school actors of the two protagonists out-performed their present-day counterparts. The young actor who played Harumichi, especially, was perfectly cast and their love story was so sweet. Granted, there are reasons why their adult character aren't as carefree and have been shaped by past unfortunate events, but the fulfilling past love story made me crave for more of that in the present. Despite this, I still think both adult actors gave really excellent performances and played their roles perfectly despite the weak plot in the present timeline.

2. A lot of unnecessary scenes that didn't contribute to the overall narrative of the story:
- That random sex scene between Harumichi and some girl he picked up at the bar (like, ok, so you're saying he's lived a full life after Yae?)
- The drawn-out scenes on the development between how Harumichi and Tsunemi started dating. Leading up to this, we already sense that Harumichi would inevitably break up with his fiance because of his deeply-seated feelings for Yae, so what's the point of showing us how he ran to her after an earthquake? We know there won't be any conclusion for them anyway and I was honestly quite bored with that arc and had to patiently wait for him to finally break up with her.
- The long karaoke scene between Yae and Uta was weird since they only met once briefly in the taxi.
- The awkward scenes that mentioned COVID-19 - I understand that it's part of the timeline but it wasn't necessary to mention imo since it doesn't affect or change their story in any way. It's like saying, oh yea, so this happened (for me, this took away the time we got to see the leads finally together in the last episode).

3. Inconsistencies:
There were a few but the one big one that left me confused was when Yu (Harumichi's younger sister) looked like she wasn't aware of Yae's memory loss in the hospital scene after Harumichi saved Yae from falling down the stairs.
BUT in episode 8, you see Yu secretly telling Tsunemi that Harumichi's first love has amnesia when she visited his family. That scene was clearly before the hospital scene because Yu's daughter was only 4 years old, versus 10 years old when she was visiting him at the hospital.

Towards the end, I feel like there's just something...missing...
I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to describe this accurately, but there were a few scenes that left me wanting MORE because they were supposed to be really climactic moments but we don't really get these emotional moments that should have come with the events.

For example, when Yae regains her memories - I wish they had a few more scenes to show how heartbroken she was to have forgotten about a person who was such a BIG part of her life. Yes, she cried, but it wasn't the heartbreaking kind that truly displayed all the loss she felt - I just wish it was elongated a little more and made her think about the chances that passed her by had she remembered. The moment when they reunited in Iceland was also quite anti-climactic and felt very rushed - there was not explanation as to WHY he chose to leave the country in the first place and we don't get any confessions from Yae's mom admitting what she did. Those small details were all glossed over and so many strings left untied.

I know it was supposed to be a satisfying ending, but my heart wasn't as filled as it could have been had the script been executed better or at least been fine-tuned a bit. I just feel like there was SO much potential for this drama to have been excellent but it ended up being just good.

Overall, I still really enjoyed this drama despite its flaws and I was completely enamored from episode 1. I really reallyyy loved how the timelines weren't sequential and were revealed slowly, almost like peeling back layers of an onion to form the whole story. I would still highly recommend this, especially if you're in the mood for a romance drama that will pull on your heartstrings. Just don't expect a completely ironed-out story and you'll enjoy this a lot.

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Beautiful heartrending nostalgia

The pangs of first love is hard to forget...
The story is nothing new. In fact it's more cliche ridden and superbly tropey but one have to greatly appreciate how they were masterfully utilized to not only tell a tale of love but also of life.

- ACTING:
I was initially invested because of takeru satoh as I loved him as kenshin. The trailer with him giving that yearning look and hikaru utada's first love really sold me to watch this but I am simply blown away by the superb acting of the whole cast especially the younger versions of haruimichi and yae. Although they were playing each other's older and younger versions they managed to bring their own refreshing element in their acting which was brilliant.
-CINEMATOGRAPHY AND COLOR PALETTE
The director and ALSO the scriptwriter knows her shit for sure. Much of the story was elevated because of how impressive the cinematography, lighting and colors presented a beautiful backdrop on the story, the characters emotions, their journey, their trials and tribulations.
-OST
Last but not least, the ost. Since the whole story was inspired by a song it took the centre stage and accompanied the viewers as we glide with the characters in their journeys. The whole ost just stayed with me like an aftertaste. There were some English songs in there which in my opinion were unnecessary.

The CONS
-Rushed ending which I understand is because of 9 episode limit but I wanted it to be a little more. It was pleasant but convenient.
I felt there were some loose ends that were not tied properly as well, some plot holes that were not explored properly. I also wanted more angst and heartbreaking scenes between the adult haruimichi and yae as they start falling in love with each other all over again.

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