2025

This drama was very cute. The two main leads did an excellent job portraying their characters very realistically. I found myself discovering new sides to these characters thanks to the excellent acting. Taichi in particular had a darker side, a deep emotional wound, that was always lurking under the surface.

The drama also did a superb job of portraying the isolation people with hidden disabilities can experience, especially if it's something that changes the core way people interact with you after they find out. The basketball scene near the beginning was one of the finest scenes of the whole drama in my opinion.

The only thing holding this drama back was how rushed it felt towards the end, in the last three or so episodes. If it had been able to get a few more episodes and properly space those major events out, the conclusion of the story would've been much more impactful, though I did enjoy the callback to the beginning in the very last scene.

The production quality was amazing, and all the actors did a superb job in their roles. Meguro Ren was super expressive as a recently-turned-deaf person, and I felt like the gentle way the drama explored the varying lived experiences of the characters in that community, hearing or not, was fascinating and well done. Kawaguchi Haruna also did an excellent job as Aoba. My favorite line was toward the end when flowers were used as an example of an alternative mode of communication, giving a very concise view of the question the drama was wrestling with the entire time -- What are words, where do they come from, and can they accurately convey the intended meaning of our inner world? I also liked the role music played in the drama. As someone who essentially fills any empty space with music of some kind, it was eye-opening to see what it may be like to suddenly have that very large portion of your life ripped away from you.

What I mostly disliked about this drama were the first few episodes. I thought it was not only a waste, but also entirely irrelevant to have the two main leads + Minato start in what is essentially a love triangle. Sakura's mom also quite annoyed me with how she insisted on being the centre of Sakura's disability, centering herself and her feelings above anyone else's in the family. Contrasting that to Moe, Sakura's little sister, who began learning sign language as soon as she knew about his hearing, it really makes the selfishness of the mom's actions stand out, and it makes sense why Sakura wouldn't want to visit home for such a long time.