What a viewNetflix Japanese series First Love takes romance through the years, and puts it under a slow-burning microscope
- Rikako Yagi and Taisei Kido play school sweethearts in First Love, while Hikari Mitsushima and Takeru Satoh play them as adults
- Meanwhile, Shantaram on AppleTV+ follows Charlie Hunnam’s anti-hero, who escapes from prison in Australia, and hides out in Bombay
Ahhh! Young love: the dreamy promise of soft-focus romance in perpetuity. The dull reality of misplaced passion and withered ambition; the biting disappointment of petrified plans to live together happily ever after.
Such is the perceptive treatment of all these trademark sentiments and more by Japanese director Yuri Kanchiku in First Love (Netflix) – a series inspired by two songs from Japanese-American J-pop queen Hikaru Utada.
Nine slow-burning episodes of enchantment trace the relationship between Sapporo-schooldays sweethearts Yae Noguchi (Rikako Yagi) and Harumichi Namiki (Taisei Kido), who are so enamoured of each other that nothing can put them asunder, ever – nothing but slipping into adulthood and amassing the usual grown-up problems.
The mature Noguchi (Hikari Mitsushima) and Namiki (Takeru Satoh) are comparatively unfulfilled in life, quietly pining for each other and, having lost touch, unable to find the missing pieces to complete their respective existences.
And while they do somehow drift back together, they soon find themselves apart again, as if fate has decided that as a pair, they just aren’t meant to be. (The suspicion even arises that perhaps we’re watching the stories of two different couples, so physically unlike are the stars’ younger and older selves.)