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First Love: Hatsukoi japanese drama review
Completed
First Love: Hatsukoi
0 people found this review helpful
by Fazanchaudhry
Jul 22, 2024
9 of 9 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 6.0
Story 6.0
Acting/Cast 7.0
Music 7.0
Rewatch Value 5.0
This review may contain spoilers
From the first episode, I knew this drama would be special. I love how the narrative is done with the future and the past as well as the scenery in all the scenes. It truly makes you feel as though you are there with these characters in Japan. It is relatively short, but even with the short series length, you get completely attached to the story. straight from the first episode

The soundtrack in this drama is easily one of the best I have seen before in dramas, the different sounds and how they fit so perfectly in specific narrative moments is done perfectly and makes the show that much more enjoyable. It gave me a bit of an anime type of feel, specifically Naruto with how recognizable the sounds felt while watching the series. Even later on in the series, while I have already heard the OST, it was still as gut wrenching as the first time hearing it.

In the second episode, there was a line Yae said when she was watching Titanic “ Why am I crying so much when I know it’s going to sink “, and this line holds such a true meaning in regards to life. We often know what is bound to happen, but we still can not help but feel emotions in the moment. We think for some reason things will change, but when they don't, we feel abandoned and destroyed. The thing that differs humans from any other animal is our ability to think rationally as well as emotionally and this is our biggest blessing and curse as a species as it leaves so much up to rationale.

I loved the little plot regarding sign language with Yae and the sister especially later on in the series when they first met after all those years in the hospital and Yae was surprised as to how she could fully understand and do sign language herself. The muscle memory for some things such as language truly never leaves you. This made the scene that much more memorable and combined with the ambience and music in the background, it was done perfectly. The simple love story between Yu and Bonji as well was very well done and made the characters flow better. In narratives sometimes when side characters get more of a story attached to them, it makes the main story and main characters narratives even more interesting and more in depth which was a great touch.

This series had a lot of promise from the first couple episodes but could not hold my attention in the slightest. The tropes kept on getting more and more predictable as well as the characters were not acting like humans. In dramas, it is expected that we will receive stereotypical moments, but the characters were not acting like themselves, and there was too many situations that just happened for a narrative purpose and was not in the slightest ever actually realistic.

For example when Yae magically remembered sign language and never pressed on why or how she would have known this randomly. Also the conversation she had with Yu, I find it incredibly hard to believe a grown adult woman can be so stupid as to not want some sort of answers. The show became way too unbearable with all the corny moments coupled with unrealism. We are also not given a good explanation on Tsunemi and and the reasons that the Harumichi chose to do what he did.

This drama is a massive let down and I would only recommend it if you would like to waste 9 hours of your day.
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