A Chill Slice-of-life With No Interest In Showing Any Of Its Tepid Stakes Being Resolved
Hirayasumi is based on an award-winning manga that continues to be published at the time of this review, and so part of my issues with the writing in this series may well be because the parts of the stories that were available or chosen for this adaptation may well have had good satisfying resolutions in subsequent issues of the manga, but they are decidedly not present here. You will find many more positive opinions about this series in the comments below, and if you liked the manga, this series may well be exactly what you hoped it would be (though there is at least one reader in the comments who disagreed with one aspect of the casting). For me, however, the series had some mildly interesting set-ups that could have led to things like character growth, dramatic confrontations, heart-warming reconciliations, and maybe even romance but all of that takes place off-screen to make room for more quotidian scenes of grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning.The series centers on Hiroto who has recently inherited a small but cozy house in a relatively downscale residential neighborhood of Tokyo. Hiroto is a free spirit who once had successfully launched a career as an actor, but he suffers intense social anxiety in the presence of any woman he finds attractive and so was basically unhireable for any role requiring him to do a scene with one. That could be a very interesting story to tell, but all of that takes place before the start of this series and is only covered in a couple of flashbacks. It's also an interesting set up for his interactions with Yomogi, a pretty realtor in the neighborhood, who he keeps encountering. Do we have a pairing that could lead to Hiroto's overcoming his anxiety and Yomogi opening up her isolated and lonely lifestyle to a broader group of friends? Nope. That might increase one's investment in these characters and we can't have that. There are groceries to be bought, dammit!
Joining Hiroto in the house is Hiroto's cousin Natsumi who has moved from the countryside to start art school. She secretly aspires to be a mangaka despite the fact that she knows in her very soul that if she lets anyone know, it will expose her as a geek. The horror! Natsumi is overly dramatic, happily blunt with Hiroto but very shy with the new people she's meeting in college. Natsumi submits her manga to contests, and gets brought into the system to develop her work for publication. And so obviously her story will be about what she learns about creation for commercial publications and the struggles of becoming a mangaka? Naw. That might be interesting. We need more scenes of her complaining about working parttime at a restaurant.
Also along for the ride is Hideki, Hiroto's best friend from high school who is facing the worries and stress of having his first child in a marriage which may well already be troubled. On top of that, his work life is shit. Surely, we'll get to see him grapple and engage with these issues, right? Eh, well. A little. He does learn to immediately wash their one bottle for formula once the baby is born. Yay?
As you can tell, my issues with this series are pretty much purely with the writing. And even there the characterizations are fine and, in some ways reasonably, interesting. But the series actively avoids putting the resolutions to any of these plot threads on screen. There is a lot of tell and very little show whereas there is plenty of time for random encounters on the streets and eating meat buns while walking from the combini.
The production values for this series are fine, and the acting is quite good throughout given the meagre material the actors are given to work with. Mori Nana as Natsumi brings an energetic physicality to this role which is quite fun, and she has a delightful chemistry with Mitsushima Nazuna (who is pretty new to TV and film) playing Akari, Natsumi's one new friend. (To the point that it's very easy to ship them for a GL which, sadly, would be far, far too engaging of an idea for this project.) Yoshimura Kaito is good as Hideki, an easily unlikeable character who, like everything in this series, is not entirely redeemed in any sense. But he does bring some some intensity and emotions to his scenes which help relieve the stretches entirely devoid of any other interest. Okayama Amane as Hiroto and Yoshioka Riho are both good solid veterans and playing likeable characters here. They might have had some chemistry together had the scripts let them.
All in all, the series is a chill look at a year in lives of a few characters in residential Tokyo. There are generally some good food moments in each week's episodes, but the series is decidedly not one of the many food-based jdramas. The themes are mildly countercultural and against the more typical salaryman culture found in Tokyo and the rest of urban Japan. But there are much better series out there directly addressing that issue in far more interesting ways than you'll find in this series. You may well enjoy this series because of its relaxed pacing and low stakes, and readers of the manga may well enjoy seeing these characters come to life. But if you enjoy dramas for, you know, the slightest bit of drama (or at least, any kind of resolution to said drama), look elsewhere.
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