âYouâre always like the sunâŚEvery time you touch me, I feel warm too.âÂ
What a beautiful show. When I first heard about this drama and read the manga, I was skeptical they would be able to adapt this tastefully for the MBS Drama Shower line up. But now that itâs concluded, Iâm happy to say that the adaptation is very smart and deftly handledâthe drama really does justice to the core narrative while stripping out some of the more problematic elements of the manga. I was impressed by not only the adaptation choices in the writing, but also the overall look, tone, and feel of this drama. It really delivered a mood and sucked me right into its world week after week despite being such a short show.Â
That said, it wasnât perfect. It leaned far too heavily on repetitive flashbacks, it was still a bit limited in its depiction of physical intimacy despite the heavy narrative focus on sex, and I personally did not appreciate the choice to end episode seven on a cliffhanger involving sexual assault. The story didnât need that, and it felt like a cheap ploy that was a bit beneath this show. I told @bengiyo last week that if they had just gone a beat further into the scene to show us Kazuma arriving and cut the episode there, that would have been perfect. And sure enough, thatâs the first thing that happens when we return to that scene in episode 8. The audience didnât need to spend a week worried about Ren being assaulted, and I wish they had not done it.Â
âIâm sorry for having you bear everything. I couldnât protect you.â
That criticism aside, I was very moved by the rest of the finale and the conclusion of Ren and Kazumaâs arc. I cried no less than three times: when Kazuma finally acknowledged what Ren had been through and confessed, three times, each time more emphatic until he ended with aishiteiru (a deeper expression of love than we typically get in Japanese dramas), when Ren allowed Kazuma to care for him in the aftermath of the assault and then asked Kazuma to take off his wristband, and when Kazuma told Ren exactly how lonely and aimless his years without him felt and how he feels he can only fully be himself when they are together.Â
âI want you to take it off for me. I donât need it anymore.â
I also loved that we got to see a tiny bit into their happy couple life, when they are fully out to their friends and family, starting a new business, and just being together every day as they have always wanted. And I was absolutely thrilled by the final scene where they ended their day walking hand in hand, reminiscing about their childhood together. Because doesnât that just tell us all we need to know about how Ren has opened up and learned to communicate now that he is secure and safe in this relationship? He has healed to the point where he can casually bring up their teen relationship and joke about how into Kazuma he was. After his decade of living in that dark space of fear and isolation and lonely yearning, I needed to see him laughing and teasing and confidently wearing his heart on his sleeve. At long last, Ren has stepped into the light.Â
i’m not really a hater so much as a disliker. occasionally the fires of hate burn within me but mostly i just encounter things and go hm. don’t like that.
