Hanae Kisahara (Kaya Kiyohara) is a young Karate competitor with hopes of joining the Japan Team. Haruki Ashida (Shotaro Mamiya) is a musician struggling to catch up to his former successes but coming up dry.
By chance one evening Hanae is training in a park nearby Ashida’s apartment. It is late at night and she is noticed by the morose Haruki as he steps outside for a breather.
Her cries of Kyaaa!” echo in the park as she punches the air with her moves, startling Haruki and causing him to snicker loudly!
Hanae stops practicing when she hears the laugh, and scans the rooftops, locking in on the shadowing figure looking down.
Looking up at him, Hanae stoically stares down the figure until he retreats, bowing his head in apology! Satisfied, Hanae turns and leaves, thinking that winning this confrontation promises good results for her upcoming tryouts.
They don’t know it yet but the two will play a bigger role in each other’s futures….
At the tournament, Hanae is expected to put on a good showing, and her friends have come to support her, including Shingo (Fuma Kikuchi), Rin (Sakura Fujiwara) and her Mother-figure Naomi (Izumi Inamori) who ran the orphanage she came from.
Indeed, Hanae aces all of her sets and it looks like her dreams of joining the Japan team is a sure thing! To celebrate her success,a big party is prepared for her victory at the orphanage!
But tragedy strikes when she is on her way to the orphanage from the rec center. While crossing a street,Hanae is struck down by a motorcyclist and she is badly injured. Though she survives, her dreams of Karate professionalism away from her.
Fast forward a year and, though Hanae’s recovered physically, she is a shadow of her former self. Where she was once focused and driven, she in now a lethargic mess with little motivation to see her through each day.
In an effort to get her out and about, She is instructed to join the Orphanage's cleaning service with Shingo, which she willingly, if not enthusiastically, does.
In the meantime, the songwriter who once has a smile at Hanae’s antics is still in a slump. His big one-hit-wonder is now a mostly forgotten song and his management is impatiently waiting for him to come back with something new.
His former bandmates like Kaoru (Keisuke Higashi) only seems to come around for money, and their promoter Yumiko Date (Chiaki Kuriyama) inform Ashida that unless he can come up with something, he will be let go.
She tells him part of his problem is that he hasn’t really had any experiences with romance and love to inspire him, and suggest he find someone to have a relationship with and see if it helps him improve his creation process.
It’s at this moment when Hanae and Haruki's paths cross again, when Sunshine Cleaning is hired by Haruki to clean his studio. This time it is Hanae by herself when Haruki lets them in, and she is impressed with the size of the place!
She gets down to cleaning, and when she puts in her earphones before doing the job, Haruki is curious to hear what young kids like she might be listening to.
Hanae confesses that it's actually just ONE song she's listening to, on repeat. She tells him it's a song that helps her concentrate when she is working and in fact has helped her through some rough times. When Hanae shows him the song on her ipod, he is stunned to find that the song she is playing is one of his own, that original hit that made it so big at the time!
While Hanae goes back to work, Haruki sits down to play the tune on his piano, and the sound of his voice and the music hits Hanae hard and she remembers all the good and bad times the song helped her through throughout the years.
"Y-You're the one who sang this!" Hanae gushes, and Haruki nods. It's been awhile since he felt like his songs had any meaning and is taken aback by how important it is to her.
Hanae is, of course, is delighted to find that he is the man who wrote and sang her song, but she is unprepared when he suddenly asks her, “Would you consider going out with me?”
What will the future bring to these two who couldn’t be further apart and more different!?
Yeah, the set-up is a fairly mundane one and the old chestnut about needing love to break out of your shell is old as time. But Kaya Kiyohara is SO interesting as the tomboyish Hanae, you just can’t wait to see where she goes next!
PS: SUCH a surprise to see Sakura Fujiwara here!When I saw her, my first thought was “Hey! it’s the mute girl from that Masaharu Fukuyama drama!” And my NEXT thought was, “Gee, I haven’t seen her in YEARS in ANYTHING!”
Going on to her asiawiki stats, it’s easy to understand why: she hasn't’ been in more than THREE dramas, including Fight song! Hope we get to see more of her!
PPS: Speaking of Fight Song, every time I see the title, my mind immediately begins playing the good ol’ ARASHI song “Fight Song” a big, big favorite of mine for years!
