Titles:
Japanese: いつかこの恋を思い出してきっと泣いてしまう or Itsuka Kono Koi wo Omoidashite Kitto Naite Shimau
English: Someday, When I Recall This Love, I Will Surely Cry or Love That Makes You Cry
Broadcast Year: 2016
Subtitled Episodes Available at: Ondramanice
Spoiler-free Synopsis:
This story is a love hexagon that mostly centers on a young woman, Sugihara Oto, who has her purse snatched while visiting Tokyo. A worker at a moving company, Soda Ren, who is a roommate of the guy who stole her purse finds the purse in their apartment and decides to drive to the countryside to return the purse to Oto. Ren helps Oto to flee from an approaching arranged marriage to an older man by driving her back to Tokyo. The two immediately lose touch with each other, and Oto establishes a new life for herself by becoming a healthcare worker at a corporate-run elder care facility. All the pieces of the hexagon are gradually drawn together, and the interweaving plots reach a climax on the day of Tohoku earthquake in 2011. The story then continues after a time gap to a point when the six are brought back together and resolve their relationships.
Crimes and Misdemeanors:
Purse Snatching, Land Swindling, Exploitative Employee Recruitment, Corporate Hostile Takeovers, Elder Care Worker Exploitation
Awards: Best Actor, Theme Song Award
Cast:
The protagonist, Oto, is played by Arimura Kasumi who has not appeared in any of Sakamoto's other series; however, she immediately followed this role with the prestigious lead in one of last year's asdoras, Hiyokko, which is a delightful tale of a young woman from a rural rice farm who searches for her missing father in 1960's Tokyo. Hiyokko also features both leads from Transit Girls.
Takahata Mitsuki plays another side of the love hexagon, Hinata Kihoko, who is also interested in Ren. She is also part of the ensemble in Mondai No Aru Restaurant where she plays the one character who flips sides moving from accommodating the sexual harassment at the restaurant corporation to joining the other misfits at Bistro Fou.
Mitsushima Hikari plays Oto's single-mother in flashbacks. She, of course, was also the leads in Woman and Soredemo, Ikite Yuku, and one of the members of the quartet in Quartet
Kora Kengo plays the love interest for all three women in the hexagon, Ren. He won the Best Actor award for this performance at the 88th Television Drama Academy Awards.
Beyond Here There Be Spoilers:
The first thing we must consider is the title which touts a melodrama that the series does not quite achieve (and it's probably better for that fact). Yes, there are some frustrating missed connections that the participants might regret in the following years, but other than some trauma from Ren and Oto's families and some implied trauma from the earthquake this series does not really go full weepy. It is a romantic drama in which the central pair are kept apart by various circumstances, and ends when the two finally acknowledge their love for each other and kiss.
The six characters who are interested in each other are mostly fully realized. All three of the women, Sugihara Oto, Hinana Kihoko and Ichimura Konatsu are interested in Ren, Ren and Asahi Ibuki are interested in Oto, and, lastly, Nakajo Haruta is interested in Konatsu.
The central love triangle in the group involves Oto, Ren and Ibuki, and we get to know their characters in some depth. Ren has come to Tokyo to try to make enough money to get back the land that his grandfather lost in a swindle. Oto was placed in the care of some of her relatives as a young girl after her unmarried mother died. The relatives are emotionally abusive and seek to make as much money as they can for themselves via an arranged marriage once she's old enough. Lastly, Ibuki is the younger son of the owner of a large corporation which runs several elder-care facilities including the one where Oto works. He seeks the approval of his father who has had little interest or time for him.
The series seems to have been written from the top down in many respects. Oto and Ren are introduced to each other through Ren's sense of justice in the first episode, and the series ends on their first kiss. The series is exactly (IIRC) divided in half by the earthquake with the narrative time of the first part continuing right up to the evening before the quake, and then, surprisingly, leaping five years at that point where the second part takes up the story in a similar fashion where we slowly uncover what has happened to the characters in the gap.
One of the themes of the series is integrity and justice. Ren's grandfather dies before Ren is able to earn enough to repurchase the land his grandfather had once tilled which causes Ren to lose his sense of justice, and so, after the earthquake he takes on a shady job helping to sign men up to work for some unseen nefarious organization which apparently exploits them. He no longer cares about how he earns his keep, and is only interested in helping his friend Haruta care for Konatsu who is still suffering from PTSD from the events of the quake which we are never shown nor, I believe, even told about. When Oto seeks him out again she plays an essential role in restoring Ren's integrity.
Meanwhile, Ibuki has been courting Oto to the point that his engagement ring for her literally slips off her finger as he tries to convince her to marry him. His trajectory in the latter half of the series is the opposite of Ren's. He had started as journalist who had written an article exposing issues in the healthcare industry, but when his older brother can no long take being the corporate thug who fires all the workers as his father repeatedly launches hostile corporate take-overs, Ibuki steps into his brother's role to win his father's approval. But Oto discovers that integrity is essential for her in a potential love, and chooses the restored Ren over the fallen Ibuki.
In short, this series is a night-time soap opera with some reasonably interesting twists along the way, but, perhaps, not the grand tragedy suggested by the title. There is a bit of the familial formation that runs throughout Sakamoto's work, but this group is not drawn as close as a whole as his other bands of misfits in his series. Sakamoto's script is successful at getting us to invest in this group of people, but I'm not sure that it achieves as deep of a catharsis as some of his other tragic series.
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