This is @Welmaris’ review of the dorama “First Love” starring Sato Tekaru and Mitsushima Hakari.

The original title is “First Love: Hatsukoi”. According to google, “hatsukoi” means first love.

Please do not post her review on other social media without asking permission. Do not plagiarize. Do give her credit.

Thank you, @Welmaris! –pm3

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Episode 1. When the Lilacs Bloom

I ended up binging all episodes of this show in one day. (I was alone at my mountain cabin. It was foggy and wet outside, and I had no reason compelling me to leave my warm, dry nest.) Once started, I didn’t want to tear myself away. I found the show beautifully filmed and acted. The story was engaging.

The characters are flawed people. No one is a saint, and no one is evil. Some are more likeable than others, letting selfishness drive decisions and actions, but they are recognizable humans, not monsters. The actors that were cast in these roles did a good job fleshing out the characters. I’ve only seen the male lead, Satoh Takeru, in one other show—Love Lasts Forever—and like him better in this role because he displays a wide range of emotions. LLF called for him to act tsundere most of the time.

The story is told in a non-linear format, weaving together past and present. For the most part the story progression is clear because time switches clarify plot points. But in the montage during the opening credits, characters from different timelines are placed in the same scene; we’re not aware of this at first, because we haven’t met one of the two characters yet. When we do meet him, Kosaka, a few scenes later as a student daydreaming at his school desk, we aren’t given a clue as to when this scene takes place or where he fits in the story, but we do learn something important about his character. Be patient. The screenwriter and director are doling out snapshots of the main players in this story, regardless of their place in the timeline or relationships to other characters. It will all become clearer soon. Rewatching the beginning of the first episode to write these notes, I’m impressed how masterful are these brief introductions. Even the music-loving student watching a video on his phone of a dancer is significant. Every detail matters, even the dancer removing a hair tie.

When the show starts, we see the adult female lead driving a taxi at night through a busy city. In a voiceover, we hear her say, “Someone once said life is like a jigsaw puzzle. From our best memories to the horrible experiences we want to curse fate for are all irreplaceable pieces of our lives. A lost ticket, a dress worn in December, A stain from an ink called ‘Blue Hour.’ An intimate moment on a winter beach. A Mars rover with your name on it. A pop star your same age. Dreams that never come true. Failed romances. Those who drifted away. Even those fateful mistakes, are they filling up my picture?” This is forewarning that the story we are about to embark upon includes both joy and heartache. After watching the show to completion, I realize the examples given in the voiceover are specific to the story.

As soon as the voiceover finishes, we see a schoolgirl walking through beautiful rural scenery as she recites the phrases a flight attendant would say to boarded passengers before a flight: “Good morning, everyone. This is Norn Airlines flight 627 bound for Reykjavik…I’ll be your cabin assistant, Yae Noguchi. According to forecasts, the weather should be fair for most of the flight, but please remain in your seats with your seatbelts fastened in case of sudden turbulence.” This isn’t just filler, but a warning carefully selected by the screenwriter. Keep those seatbelts fastened, watchers!

We go back to the adult female lead expertly operating her taxi on a rainy night. Her voiceover continues: “What would my life be now if I had never met you?” I believe this is not a question to be applied to just the character speaking, the female lead, and not to just one person who’d entered her life, but about—and on behalf of—many people with whom she’s formed a connection. How have you changed me? How have I changed you?

And then we see what appears to be the first meeting of the couple central to this story. Yae Noguchi and her friend, high school freshmen, are about to get in trouble for rolling up their uniform skirts and exposing their knees, when the school official is distracted by two young men entering the school grounds wildly on a motor scooter. The official runs after the scooter yelling “Namiki” while Namiki taunts him from the back of the scooter. Yae Noguchi seems enchanted by the lighthearted rebelliousness of Namiki. When he soon thereafter helps her carry a package to a classroom, she’s stunned to meet him in person and grateful for his help. He dismisses it as something that was asked of him by the teacher, but Yae later learns the teacher had not made the request.

We did catch a glimpse of the adult male lead during the opening credits, during a specific part of the female lead’s voiceover. When watchers are introduced to the adult male lead, he is juxtaposed with his younger self, and the comparison doesn’t come across well. The younger Namiki is confident and admired by his peers; older Namiki has fallen asleep on the job, so deeply that he’s missed the time he should leave work and go to a personal meeting. He’s a caring person, giving up a taxi (take note of details, watchers) to a heavily pregnant woman despite his being late, but he seems a bit careless to have kept his girlfriend and her parents waiting for no good reason.

The scene while adult Namiki is riding in the taxi is dense with hints about his life and mindset. He refers to his girlfriend, but is going to meet her parents because (as we’ll later learn) they’re planning to get married. He doesn’t call her his fiancée. When he answers his phone in the taxi, we see that the caller is identified by first and last name,Tsunemi Arikawa, not a loving nickname one might call a girlfriend. Even though he’s on his way, has bought a gift for her mother, and says he’s sorry, it is clear from his side of the conversation that he has disappointed his girlfriend. After the call ends, Namiki hears a song starting on the taxi’s radio and asks the driver to raise the volume. The song, and the bouquet of lilacs he’s carrying, bring him a memory. He then asks the taxi driver to turn around and take him back: not immediately after getting off the phone with his wife-to-be, as if she’d cancelled his late arrival, but after he’d indulged in a memory of Yae Noguchi from his youth.

The song Namiki hears on the taxi radio is First Love by Hikaru Utada, and is the inspiration for this show. The lyrics are (from genius.com):

The last kiss was a tobacco flavor
It was a bitter and painful fragrance

I wonder where you’ll be tomorrow at this time
And who you’ll be thinking about

You are always gonna be my love
Even if someday I fall in love with somebody once again
I’ll remember to love, you taught me how
You are always gonna be the one
Now it’s still a sad love song
Until I can sing a new one

The frozen time is about to move
And it’s full of things I don’t want to forget, oh

Tomorrow at this time I’ll surely be crying
Thinking about you
Yeah, yeah, yeah

You will always bе inside my heart
Herе there will always be a place just for you
I hope that I have a place in your heart too
Now and forever, you are still the one
Now it’s still a sad love song
Until I can sing a new one
Oh, oh

You are always gonna be my love
Even if someday I fall in love with somebody once again
I’ll remember to love, you taught me how
You are always gonna be the one
It’s still a sad love song, yeah
Now and forever, ooh

In my opinion this show does a marvelous job of exploring the feelings expressed by this song. Especially poignant in the lyrics, and how they inform the story, is the mention of frozen time being full of things one doesn’t want to forget. Even tobacco flavored kisses move from the song into the story.

There are many details in this show that show the care with which it was put together, but might be missed by casual viewers. Something that might seem like a throwaway scene—adult Yae shopping and trying out a fountain pen; adult Yae giving the tastiest part of her meal to a young man—end up having deep meaning if remembered later. The young man with blue earphones on a tram during the opening credits turns out to be someone important in adult Yae’s life, but we have to figure it out ourselves from the brief hints given us: Yae keeping a photo in her taxi of herself carrying a little boy wearing a blue striped shirt; Yae gently nagging the young man she meets on the street about his hair getting long, as a mother might; Yae mentioning over dinner the blue striped shirt the young man, when smaller, was obsessive about. Is he her son? She spoke to her pregnant passenger (to whom Namiki gave up this taxi) as if she knew well what it was like to carry and raise a baby. Yet she lives alone, and seems to only see this young man occasionally. This sprinkling of hints keeps us engaged with the story. Even background noise gives the show flavor that will become important in future scenes: the sound of a jet plane flying overhead while Yae sits at her kitchen table, dejected because her visit with the young man was interrupted by his wanting to go do something else. There’s a big signboard the young man walks past as he hurries on his way to whatever he wants to do: advertising Hikaru Utada’s song “Hatsukoi” from 2018. This is the other song by Hikaru Utada that inspired this screenplay. The lyrics, according to lyricstranslate.com, are:

My heart, pounding deafeningly in my chest
My legs, now frozen in a way they never are
My tears, silently trickling down my cheek
They tell me…that this is my first love

I need you, I need you
I need you, I need you
I need you, I need you
I need you, I need you

Anyone can do it well
All people fall in love
That’s what I always thought
And yet…

If I had never met you
I don’t think that anyone else would have led me
To one day have these feelings…

My heart, pounding deafeningly in my chest
My legs, now racing of their own accord
My tears, silently trickling down my cheek
They wound me…saying that this is my first love

I need you, I need you
I need you, I need you
I need you, I need you
I need you, I need you

I used to see things
I could do nothing about
Take them at face value
And pretend to accept them
Always…

If I had never met you
I think that I’d probably still be living my life
Without knowing why I had been born

I want to offer up my fragile self
Weak enough to be hurt by a single word
A season that will never come again
Clumsily tried to draw things to an end

The things we desire can be seen
Somewhere our hands can reach
It’s not like we can’t go on without them
Is that correct?
Truly, truly nobody knows the answer

The treetops sway, blown by the wind
And stretch towards where the sun shines
Overjoyed by the tiniest things
We were hurt by the tiniest things as well

My heart, beating maddeningly fast
The rain, now gently striking my shoulder
My tears, overflowing though I fight them back
They tell me…that this is my first love…

I need you, I need you
I need you, I need you
I need you, I need you
I need you, I need you

I think First Love: Hatsukoi is a show that is rewarding to watch once, and even better on second viewing. I’m noticing more and more Easter eggs in the first episode, details that take on greater meaning later: strawberries on the top of the birthday cake; the sound of a siren when two people are supposed to be together, but are not; favorite foods; Namiki’s confession that he liked Yae from the first time they met; a mother warning a boyfriend about dire consequences if he knocks up her daughter.

We do learn that Namiki stood up his girlfriend of seven years and her parents that day he was late due to oversleeping. He tells his sister it was because he suddenly developed a stomachache. She notices that the passcode to open his phone is 1209, which she recognizes as “her” birthday, and wonders if he still… He denies there is deep meaning to it. Are we convinced? His sister isn’t. We see that the young leads become a couple on the night of Yae’s fifteenth birthday.

The adult leads cross paths—in two different taxis—and that opportunity of reunion is lost as they go in different directions. Namiki, passenger in another taxi, is stuck in the traffic circle as Yae drives away. As we watch this action from a “god’s view” overhead camera angle, we hear Yae in voiceover saying, “Every moment…is an irreplaceable piece of our lives. But what if…you lose an important piece?”

The rest of the show will explore that question.