Umi no Hajimari~ Where the Sea Begins~

 Watched the first episode of the melancholy drama “ Umi no Hajimari” a drama that, while having some elements I dislike, has the potential of becoming a BIG favorite of mine this season!

Umi no Hajimari  tells the tale of a young woman named Mizuki Nagumo (Kotone Furukawa) raising a daughter Umi (Rana Izutani) on her own in a small isolated village. 

In the meantime, there is a young man living in Tokyo named Natsu Tsukioka (Ren Meguro) working  in a fast paced business company. He is engaged to the succesful Yayoi Momose (Kasumi Arimura) and they have happy plans for their future together.

However, a phone call changes everything for all involved. Natsu gets a call informing him of Mizuki's passing and we learn that he is Mizuki’s former boyfriend from years back.

While at the service for Mizuki, Natsu sees the little Umi for the first time, and through relatives, is stunned to find out that this little girl may be his daughter!

His Daughter?! How can this be? And as he looks curiously over Umi, Natsu's mind goes back to the past....

6 years ago, he had met Mizuki and they began a relationship with each other. The two had a carefree romance and loved each other very much, but a shadow came over them when Mizuki became pregnant... and informed Natsu she wanted to terminate the pregnancy.

Through tears Natsu wanted to talk about it, but Mizuki was steadfast and pressured him to sign off on the operation. Mysteriously, after going to the clinic to get the procedure done, she promptly cut Natsu out of her life, telling him, "I found someone I love more than you!" and severed contact with him.

That was seemingly that, and he had never heard from her since. Now Natsu finds that Mizuki did NOT terminate the pregnancy and in fact raised their child all on her own! And with her now gone, Umi has no one to look after her. Mizuki’s family and friends think coldly of Natsu, having seen Mizuki struggle alone to raise her child and treating him like an abandoner.

They truthfully do not believe he has the strength or conviction take in Umi and adopt her as his own, and indeed, he is immediately conflicted at this sudden life-changing news and how it might affect his future....

Going back home, he has the world on his shoulders, and can't even bring himself to explain the problems to Yayoi (who is nonetheless supportive).

Umi, however, has plans of her own, always expecting that Natsu would someday come for her, and when she shows up unexpectedly at his doorstep, asking "So...when do you become my Daddy?", he must finally confront the important choices he must make.

A real sombre drama, at least so far, and I’m not sure if I can sit through an entire show of people fighting, nagging, berating and condemning each other, (family melodramas, OI!),  but the child actress playing the daughter is so sweet and believable as the innocent Umi that you really CARE about her and just HAVE to find out what will happens!

As some of you might remember, I absolutely adored the 2004 Tsuyoshi Kusanagi drama "Boku to Kanojo to Kanojo no Ikiru Michi", about a man forced to take care of his little daughter after his wife disappeared, and I can feel the same kind of vibes in this drama. Very optimistic about seeing what's to come!
Kasumi Arimura is an odd choice for the sure-to-be-set-upon fiancee. The way these dramas usually go, her role would be simply as an obstacle to overtake/win over, a role more befitting a newbie actress, though I admit I have no real idea where the story is going, and this could be a huge, powerful part for Kasumi. But I guess we’ll see.

Like I said, Umi no Hajimari has so far really struck me with its potential for greatness, so I'll be diligently watching this one!

A Fractured Reunion in "Gomen, Aishiteru"

Out of the 10 J-dramas I’m been currently watching, nine shows were all of the light-hearted or straight out comedy types, and now that I’ve wrapped up Reverse, the only “serious” drama of the bunch, I’ve been looking for a gripping, dark melodrama to balance my fun-going palate of shows, and after one episode it looks like the Nagase Tomoya/Riho Yoshioka drama GOMEN, AISHITERU is the one to watch!

“Sorry, I Love You” has had quite a bit of history to it, the original drama was a Korean show which aired in 2004 and then there was a Chinese movie in 2014, a Thai remake in 2016, and now we have the full-on Nihongo treatment here in 2017!

Tomoya Nagase stars as Ritsu Okazaki, a Japanese man working for an influential Korean family in Korea, but when he is wounded in the line of duty, he is put out to pasture, and it’s then that he decides to go back to Japan and seek out his mother.

Ritsu was abandoned by his mother and dropped off an an orphanage but now he wants to meet up with her, where he expects her to welcome him with open arms and apologize for even having left him.

Arriving back at the orphanage he once called home, he is met by the innocent Wakana Kawai, played with impeccable charm by the ever-adorable Chizuru Ikewaki. 

 They’ve been childhood friend ssince the early days in the orphanage, but since that time Wakana’s been in a car accident which damaged her brain and she is more or less still childlike it her outlook. Nonetheless, she’s managed to have a child herself, and with the arrival of her friend Ritsu,  hopes to make a go of it  as a family once more.

But Ritsu’s main reason for coming home has always been to meet his biological mother, and through the means of an unscrupulous agent who works for his biological father, Ritsu finds the address where his mother lives and makes his way down to reunite with her.
What Ritsu doesn’t know is that his mother, Reika Hyuga (played by the stoic Shinobu Otake), has long since moved on from the time she abandoned him at the orphanage. A famous pianist, she now lives a life of affluence and had another child, a boy named Satoru (Kentaro Sakiguchi), he himself a genius pianist, whom she dotes on and worships like the world. She is watching over him while he practices the piano as the doorbell rings…

 Back when Ritsu was still living in Korea, he had an altercation where some thuglike colleagues of his attempted to rob, con and kidnap a pretty girl who was visiting Korea. This girl was Rinka Mita (Riho Yoshioka), and she was there for her job, as the assistant to the aforementioned pianist Satoru, who was having a concert there.

When her purse gets stolen by the thugs, she asks Ritsu for his help, and though he initially has no real interest to help her,  her drunken talk and attitude charms him, enough that when the thugs come back to kidnap her, Ritsu instead pulls her away, and, on a stolen bicycle, spirits her away to hide the night out in his old lean-to.

The next morning, Ritsu is gone and Rinka has only a vague memory of  the man who saved her life that night as she packs up and returns to Japan. She had thought she’d never see him again and he, her. But in a strange twist of fate, it is Rinka who answers the door to the house when Ritsu comes calling! She is shocked to see him here, thinking he must have followed her here. But when he barges into the house to confront Mrs. Hyuga, she can see something else is going on.

Far from the warm reception Ritsu was hoping upon seeing his mother, he is met with fear, scorn and apprehension. She flinches away from his touch, and it is painfully clear to Ritsu that this woman has clearly forgotten him and has completely moved on. With that, Ritsu storms out of the house, never saying a word of who he is.

His pain of rejection soon turns to anger, and as the new day approaches, Ritsu comes back with a new resolve: to extract revenge on the mother who threw him away. But he is once again confronted by the sweet and caring Rinka. How will Ritsu progress from here? And how will the appearance of Rinka affect the outcome?

Rinka is involved in a one-sided love with Satoru: she is the daughter of the Hyugas' lawyer and has cared for him all her life.

Satoru is oblivious to the fact, he himself in a one sided love relationship with the cold and calculating Toko Furusawa (Ayaka Onishi)...how will Ritsu's appearance change the game between them all?

Boy, so much going on in this drama, and though the story of the orphaned child who comes back only to see his parents have moved on and gotten new children isn’t a new one (many, many dramas featured this storyline), these is so much going on that am am constantly on my toes, desperate to see what happens next. And the direction of the drama is so sad, so blue and melancholy, really, from the opening scene with Rinka visiting the site of the old lean-to where Ritsu first took her,  was already captivated and desperate to understand where the story was going. Gomen Aishiteru has become my must-see drama!

PS: Gotta admit, while I was watching the drama, I just couldn’t place who the main actress was. I knew I’d seen her before in something, but  the drama eluded me. It was only after I checked the credits did I realize that Rinka was played by the same actress who played the hilariously picked-on assistant to Tachibana (Yo Yoshida) in the medical drama “Lady Davinci No Shindan”…oh MY, didn’t recognize her, she looks soooo pretty here, she looked so haggard in Lady DaVinci , heh, who wouldn’t after being the ‘gofer” for Tachibana’s whims throughout the show, LOL

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com