Shotengai no Pianist

When he was younger, Ren Sawamoto (Kiita Komagine) passionately enjoyed playing the piano. But for unknown reasons, he gave it up and has since lived his life working as a humble electrician in a small town shopping district.

While in the neighborhood to fix a woman’s fluorescent lights, he crosses paths with the spunky Midori Kawajiri (Mio Yuki), the daughter of a music store, who hopes he can fix their doorbell which has been on the fritz.

While there, Ren sees a piano standing in the middle of the store. it is an old piano which was put out by Midori’s father to encourage people to come in and play it. But at this point, only a young girl named Moe (An Hasegawa) with hopes of making it as a musician comes in to use it!

By chance, this piano looks very much like the piano Ren played as a child, and the sight of it awakens memoirs of his past where he loved playing the piano. But he feels it is in the past.

Midori loves to paint and dreams of becoming a pro at it, but only Ren seems to see the value in her art, telling her to keep at it, which sends the girl into a tizzy!

She encourages him to try playing the piano, if just for fun, but he restrains himself. 

It's clear there has been some reason in his past to have abandoned music, though you can see it is still very dear to him. Still, he refrains from sitting at the piano.  It’s only when Moe’s mother, who sees piano playing as a waste of time, hits the piano and declares it lifeless, does he sit himself down and unload a wonderful and emotional performance of Beethoven!

His playing draws a crowd to the little store, and though he doesn’t realize it yet, with Midori as his new friend, it seems music will be coming back into his life!

This is the first time seeing both leads in a drama (well, in any real capacity, though Dramawiki tells me I’ve seen them in bit parts over the years) and they're both pretty good!

I gotta say how much actress Mio Yuki reminds me of actress Shihori Kanjiya!!! Every time I saw her smile or act goofy, I kept thinking I was watching a young Shihori, and that’s high praise indeed!

Will continue on with this show to see where it goes!