The central performances prove somewhat frustrating, particularly in the film’s early stages. Yokohama plays Rui as woefully inarticulate, while Yoshitaka grins and gurns inanely, as if to compensate for her character’s blindness by over-gesticulating using every functioning muscle in her face.

Once Rui’s dark past catches up with him, however, the film moves away from their awkward courtship into more dramatic articulations of their devotion for one another. Keita Machida makes for a suitably devious antagonist, as Rui’s old orphanage friend desperate to put him back to work, while veteran actress Jun Fubuki makes a welcome appearance as a sage nun.

Rui reaches an emotional crossroads when he learns that he may have been responsible for the car crash that robbed Akari of her sight and killed her parents. It’s a classically contrived movie coincidence, but one that compels Rui to go back to his old ways, if only to secure the money for an operation for Akari.

The stage is now set for the kind of tear-stained melodrama Miki has been knocking out for years.