Title: Ai no ato ni kuru mono / 愛のあとにくるもの / 사랑 후에 오는 것들
Rating: 8 / 10
Recommended for:
Those who wish to watch a love story about people from different countries and cultures and how a relationship is worn out by the struggles of daily life as well as those who are fans of the leads Lee Se-young and Sakaguchi Kentaro
While this is technically classified as a Korean drama, half of the story was set in Japan and half the dialogue in Japanese so I decided to post the review here. This drama is currently available for viewing on Coupang Play, Viu and Amazon Prime Video (the latter have region restrictions).
Liked:
- The story was well-crafted as it showed the gradual changes and breakdown of a romantic relationship brought about by the challenges of daily life and solitude felt caused by being alone in a foreign country. While the pace could be improved at certain junctures, the saving grace was that this drama was only 6 episodes so it didn't feel so dragged out. It was also good that the story didn't take sides and showed both versions of what went wrong for the lead couple rather than lay the blame on one side.
- The leads had really terrific onscreen chemistry as a couple madly in love in the Japan arc and later as reunited ex-lovers in the Korea arc. A story like this involving two languages can feel a bit awkward at times between the switching of languages and when actors try to speak in a non-native language. However, I felt that Lee's Japanese was better than expected so this definitely helped to boost the appeal of the story. Sakaguchi's English was also pretty nice to hear although it would have been good to hear him speak more Korean sentences than just short words and phrases.
Also keep a lookout for a number of cameos from the Japan side - I was pleasantly surprised to see them appear since I had no prior knowledge of that.
- The visuals in this drama were really beautiful and coincided with the vibe of the different arcs and the states of the lead couple's relationship. In the Japan arc, the seasons were largely in spring and summer with lots of colours and a warm feeling but in the Korea arc, the season was in winter with strong wins, greyish backtones and snow. As such, it was not too difficult to distinguish between both timelines even though the time difference between them was just 5 years.
Disliked:
- As mentioned above, the pacing can be a bit slow as the shots lingered long to emphasize certain emotions. It can be a tad boring for people who would prefer a more fast-paced or "happening"-kind of love story.
- The thing about second leads in a love story is, they tend to be projected as obnoxious, irritating or simply a nuisance. Most of the time, there is little depicted on the rationale of their behaviours so they are mostly "unlikeable" in this sense. Sad to say, the same thing happened here with the second leads looking like they were obsessed with the leads for no apparent reason. Perhaps the original novel could provide some answers about this?
- With regard to the ending, I can understand that there is a tendency to have happy endings for such stories. However, it might have been better to let them take some space to heal after talking things out before getting back together. It just seemed too sudden for them to be talking as if they won't reconcile just one night before and then patching things up overnight.
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