Nemurerukana

I tried watching the kdrama and wow they made it literally boring by taking the dark but best parts out from it. Even the color palette was all pastel lol. Also the k-actors didn't match their characters, they were made to be goody-two-shoes, as if to make the affair digestible. But the Japanese drama did not. It is muddy as hell. Korea is more conservative than Japan, so things were changed to match that vibe and to justify the affair. While Hirugao, I feel it only justified their love and not their actions. It was complex. Do watch it, you'll see parallels with Aino, Gakkou as well, and how the writer story tells.

Same, I love messy or gray characters as leads, I loved Manami the second her inner monologue complained about her job, I even loved how she threw herself into the sea lol, no well-adjusted person would do that. I also love when TWO messy character's who shouldn't fall in love, who do end up helplessly falling in love and they try to untangle their mess, it's just perfection!👌

“Both of them just look so free.”
YESSS! And it makes my heart so full. It’s like what age gap? It’s like they are both back in elementary school and look like they don’t know anything about the outside world when they are with each other. When they both talked about how they’ve both been to Miura beach when they were young, and him saying we could’ve met then💔 it was so pure, naive, wishful thinking and it was like, he almost asked..
“Where were you all of my life? and why haven’t we met earlier?”
It was so damn beautiful.🥹

Serious props to Fumino and Raul’s acting for making us believe in Takamori Taiga/Kaworu & Ogawa Manami/Ai.

“rooftop has colors that is similar to that of what is used in playpens”
Oooh I love this! I never thought about the color palette!🥰
Also the half-blinking heart of that neon sign is like.. love is half-palpable as he talks about how he is gonna teach her love.

“unlike little Taiga and little Manami, they no longer had to pretend. ”

Another lovely train of thought, thank you for this! SO TRUE!😩
It’s what makes them so pure. They have no pretense with each other when he’s Taiga, like kids are, they tell each other things without care.

Also Taiga saying he is happy that Manami said that he is not a “stupid idiot,” and how he was called that 100000 times, is just, ugh let me just cry.😭Yes! They need all the healing.❤️
Can’t wait to see their book-store date today! I hope my heart can take it lmao

My Snow Man bias is Meguro Ren, so obviously it’s “Silent” I cried SOOO much.
Movie: “Watashi no Shiawasena Kekkon”🥰

⛔️Warning though leave morality behind. I personally don’t bring my morality to drama world since it’s fiction. Since I absolutely LOVED Hirugao, when I got to know, that Hirugao’s writer and director coming together again to do this drama and Raul is here, as a Snow Man stan I was like fr? now I don’t see Raul at all and only Kaworu🤯

You can go up and click on Inoue Yumiko, she doesn’t really repeat themes, all her dramas feels like it was written by different people. I have only seen, Hirugao and Samurai High School and Kinkyu. You can go up and click on Inoue Yumiko. Her most known work is "The Great White Tower", but it’s really old and I don’t like medical dramas but I am definitely going to watch it one day.

Hirugao’s on Netflix, but it’s not polished like this because it’s old, but I am slowly exploring older Japanese dramas. This also reminds me of “Nagareboshi” https://kisskh.at/275-nagareboshi it’s waay darker and the background is a bit similar, I really liked that drama too.

Hirugao is one of my favorite jdoramas. Both “Hiruagao” and Ainogakkou have complex and morally ambiguous female leads who can’t help themselves but fall deeply in love. And the characters inner-dialogue and turmoil is exquisite. There are really few dramas where they explore women in love and I find only Japan explores the theme of 純愛/pure-love found by lonely souls the best imho. All other countrie's drama’s look too overproduced and insincere and they rarely explore dark themes or average lives of overlooked people.

Oh I completely get what you’re saying and I wholeheartedly agree too, I think both feelings exists within him right now, but a part of me is still giving him side eye because I feel Kaworu is still fully present in Taiga and he desperately wants to be number 1 and was extremely disappointed when he couldn't get it even after using her money. And he finally came back to himself and felt the meaninglessness of it all and felt stung and sorry for her after she said literally "aren't you a host to your bone marrow" after she realized it's 500k and not 50k. In my head I was like "gurrl run".

It’s what makes this drama so great, his almost split personalities' inner turmoil is already heartbreaking. The writer has made us sitting-ducks too along with Manami lmao.

Before the bill was given to Manami, bossman checked it and was disappointed in the amount. And after invading his room and he did say something along the lines of "you raised her well that she came to the club, but if you get 500k at the first go, she’d get scared and there will be no continuation". The sodateru/raising part is really important to the bossman as well. The whole world doesn’t know how pure these two are going to be, and everyone’s going to give hell.😩Also, I hated that invasion, feels like boss will not let go of him when Taiga wants to get away as he's seen his potential.

I also hope you are right about the struggle, I also feel that he wants to continue seeing Manami, and was indeed mad when his step-dad said how “idiotic women pay to be happy”. It was also pointed out that he stops picking up calls to make women desperate. So he’s good at push-pull games too. So for now I am gonna side eye for my own sanity.. idk lmao

My god, same! character struggles never felt this real to me. I barely care to write a line about drama’s I actually like and go ‘meh’, but here I am writing books about them lol I have lost my mind😵‍💫but I love them and their hippo😭

They remade Hirugao(same writer and director of this drama) and made it so boring that no one knows it was remade lmao

Np! I love this drama and it's writing and want to fangirl about it!
Same🥰I love when she calls his full name in this high toned cute voice, probably the only person in this world to call him that.💔

So cool! 😎

I wanna be biased too!! and hope it was Taiga too, because he looked like he struggled emotionally before giving the money. But was it guilt at how sincere she was to pay 500k just to give him homework? or guilt of starting a new long term plan with her after listening to his bosses advice of not asking for that much money in the beginning after the sudden room invasion?

Also him alone in his room looking at the colored kanji sheets she made and the sticky note saying "let's start from your name". Really moved him, but he also got so frustrated, was it because he hates writing complex kanji(me too lol) or he has to play the long game with her and her sincerity is unbearable on his conscience?😭

Can't wait till today's episode, I think we can then see more of his real thoughts.

大雅Taiga’s name also have 大(Great). Maybe it’s foreboding, because people have seen them shooting near Miura beach, maybe they went on a trip🥰 I don’t know.. there’s so many other foreboding things so this is nothing, others I don’t even wanna think about.😬

This drama feels like it's going to be one of my favorites jdoramas ever too. Have I mentioned how I love this screenwriter? she is amazing! Each scene is a treat, full of so much meanings and repeat value is crazy, my heart is just so full with this drama.
Hirugao’s themes song here is haunting me though.

YES YES YES! It’s a main point in the drama. ⚠️This is gonna be long:

When they are together, it feels like two children meeting in their secret playhouse. I love the hippo chair Kaworu dusted enthusiastically for his chihuahua-sensei lmao and the Calpis like drink he makes for her. They both have wounded inner children that need healing and saving. He never had any protection or attention a child deserved and she’s an overprotected child, who was never asked what she really wants or how she really feels. She also never shows her true feelings or what happens in outside world to her family (takes bandaid off before entering house). Even when she says sincerely “I went to a hostclub” his dad dismissively says “that joke is very unlike you though” and closes door without listening to her. She’s never heard in her home, she’s dimmer when she’s there, almost like her powerless mother. They both cope, one eats herbs to calm down and other protects plushies and the dad carefully puts things into ‘impossible bottles’. Indicating he controls everything carefully and mom and daughter can only react or defend. Taiga was also dismissed early in his life labeled dumb and told he is impossible to be taught, abandoned by school, his mother and classmates. Both of them have suffocative family environments.

So when they meet, it’s the wounded children meeting. She can teach him in ways she find interesting and she is finally heard(unlike in her school) and he get’s the attention, sincerity and genuineness from her that he never got as Taiga. These two are like two children who found each other trying to uplift each other and they are beaming to see each other like play-mates.🥹 This is probably shown by the writer to negate their age-gap, truly it doesn’t matter because they are pretty much the same age as one had to grow fast and the other had to grow smaller due to what their family demands.

She is shown to use Rilakkuma as wallpaper on her phone, she also has a Rilakkuma on her bed, that teddybear was famous like 10-15 years ago, indicating she has stopped growing in late teens or early 20’s. Also fans are commenting her room is so not what an average 35 year old women’s room look and it is intentional, to show how ungrown she is. Her independent divorced friend and her house is shown in contrast to her how she’s still stuck in her childhood room that hasn’t change since she was a teen with countless cute plushies, who she’s still extremely protective and says sorry to, but dad doesn’t care as he sits and she says nothing to her dad too. She’s the only child and her dad is completely domineering. Her monologue says “she can’t help but become a ‘good girl’ and can’t explain things further to her father”. Also wonders how she hasn’t become an “otona”, a fully mature adult yet.

He lives alone, messily, but a roommate is there, but he’s not a true friend, more like a co-worker. He lives shabbily because his money is taken by his parasitic mother, and he agrees to this to probably let her and little-bro live with step-dad, so they can be a family, which he never had. Taiga even though younger, compared to Manami is worldly beyond her. He has made peace with his loneliness, because it’s all he knows since he was a boy. While she yearns to love someone, he’s weary of people. He makes a joke out of everything to deal with the world and she takes anything and everything seriously.

She’s also someone who attempted suicide after she lost her dream job of making books and had a man who fell-out of love with her. The poem Ichiaku no suna, “A handful of sand” is the poem she teaches the students. It is a famous poem by Ishikawa Takuboku. It says: 大という字を百あまり砂に書き、死ぬことをやめて帰り来きたれり
“I wrote the letter 大(Great) more than 100 times in the sand, and I gave up wanting to die and returned home”.
Manami says how “piercing” this poem is to her listless students, but truly she says it to herself and how she has made peace with not dying and with her current existence. As if to say, even dying has become meaningless to her now, she is stuck and extremely alone in a rut no one but only she knows. She had became a shut-in previously too, she is weak and lonely to no end and not even her family sees that. She’s speaks her mind when outside but when she comes home she does not, she doesn’t show her real-self to no one. Her loneliness, just like the forehead wound he kissed, was only noticed by Kaworu.❤️

I loved this scene too! she is starting become someone who cheers him up.
Him calling her after he sees her fiancé, was so flirty and cheeky, as if he is looking to find comfort with her after what happened. He unconsciously feels safe with chihuahua-sensei, because she is extremely forward with what she thinks and has no malicious intentions towards him. Unlike all other people, she doesn't want things from him.

He was alone after facing abuse, in a bath robe having just washed away Kaworu.
He asks the waiter if he has to sign with his real name, shows that he’s not familiar with being in hotels and shows hesitation that he has to write his name, but then scribbles. Then he thinks back to her when she said: “learning to write his own name will help him from now on” most importantly he remembered how she said his name is “really kakkoii/cool”.. aww such a guy thing to focus on🥰😂

His name 鷹森大雅 can literally be translated as “Forest Falcon’s Greatest Odes”
Taiga originates from Book of Odes; oldest existing collection of Chinese poetry.
In a more modern sense, Taiga can mean “Greatest Grace/Elegance” and Takamori “Falcon forest”. Maybe Taiga means more but I don’t know classic Chinese poetry lmao.

Each scene is so layered and meaningful, as expected from Hirugao’s writer and director combo.👏

Loved it when the tailor asked did he do any sports because he is tall and they broke the 4th wall, when he answers “I used to dance”😂

Raul’s day job:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/B6tUoyoEONc

Fiction does influence humanity in all the ways you said, but just because it does, doesn’t mean it should confirm to a higher moral-framework. Fiction doesn’t need to be purified with ethics and moral policing precisely because it is fiction. Fiction COULD and should reflect reality as it is, in all the horror of human condition and all injustices that’s happening at every corner of this earth. Not all perpetrators meet a fitting end and that’s reality. Fiction doesn’t have to correct that. Things can be romanticized if the character/writer thinks so, it’s their story to tell, they might or not come to a “correct” realization, both portrayals are valid because humans can be wrong or grey. People should talk about fiction productively and not get reactionary with "shame-shame, put it out of my sight, close it down, think of the children rhetoric or of the easily influenced smooth-brained individuals”.

‘Perfect' fiction or coupled with criticism or censorship, wouldn’t reduce the countless “problematic things like abuse, manipulation, or toxic relationships”. Fiction should not be the medium to remedy societal woes. Fiction doesn’t have to take on the jobs of critical thinking and media literacy or ethics 101. Fiction is a safe place to explore what it is to be human, and it could and should portray anything and everything that can be conjured up by a human, it should be unmoral. Human creativity shouldn’t be stifled or limited because it could be potentially influential or because of moral conundrums.

Vigilantly checking if all unvirtuous fictional people’s deeds are met with a preconceived moral punishment, according to one’s cultural-socio-economical-dependent-morality is just a means to feel imaginary righteousness at our own comfort of watching a random drama. Especially when it comes to a foreign fiction the moral policing isn’t valid because thousands of years of separate linguistic, cultural-practices and relevancies are lost to a random viewer ignorant of cultural sensitivities, they can’t be erased because someone suddenly demands they meet western sensibilities circa AD 2020.

He just made up scribbles, didn't really sign.
Him choosing the napkin to write his name the way she taught after looking at the Chateaubriand Steak was definitely an indication that he might chose Manami over being number one day🥰
Sitting down with a napkin vs sitting down to gobble an expensive steak, he's got his priorities right lol

Akina-shachou says before leaving she ordered a chateaubriand steak for him and he could sign and eat it, she paid.

But he chose a napkin over an expensive free meal, revealing his motivation and what he might choose later too.

When I heard kore-kara from Kaworu at the end of the 1st episode, I almost had goosebumps, I love this writer and how she switches the mood.

Sure, it's can be annoying but what can we do lol

Do you mean in Japan? they are top 5 on Tver, even though tv ratings are low.

If you mean here, can't help it, international viewers are just biased against Japanese dramas in general more so when it comes to themes like these.🤷‍♀️