Air Dates: February 20th to April 2, 2020 Thursdays at 11:00 pm on Abema-TV
English translation is roughly 'Only I am 17 years old'
Episodes are about 34 minutes in length, subtitles were done by Mich/Irozuku Subs
Link to the drama's Abema-TV site: https://abema.tv/video/title/90-1342
Main Cast: All are 24 in age as most of the action takes place in 2020 though there are many scenes from 2013 when they are seventeen, however Kota who should also be 24 years old is still seventeen...
Marie Iitoyo as Mei Konno... has recently returned to her hometown of Yagami after being fired from her temp job in Tokyo, she had such a crush on Kota when he passed away in 2013
Hayato Sano as Kota Sometani.... died on April 12, 2013 at the age of seventeen but has he just returned from the dead?
Kosei Yuki as Iori Ishikawa.... these top five characters were all high school friends who drifted apart after graduating, Iori is now a doctor at his father's hospital
Karen Otomo as Haruka Noda.... Mei's best friend and works at a beauty salon
Yutaro Watanabe as Ryuhei Yoshimura.... the fifth friend of the group who remained in Yagami and works at the train station
Kenta Hamano as Daiki Shindo... head priest at the local shrine
Yoshi as Naoki Shindo.... teen son of the priest who is in training at the shrine
Yoshihiko Hakada as Kazumi Akaike... the mayor, was he involved in Kota's death?
Will start with one minor detail and that's of the man in the top two screenshots. We met him briefly at the beginning of the seventh episode, he had told Kota that his time on Earth will end when the final blossom drops from the special cherry tree. Presumed he was the priest of the shrine Kota had been staying at but he was actually just a mysterious man with no name. After Kota had left the shrine to live his final days that man had found him and brought Kota to his small shack in the woods. There he told Kota he went through the same adventure he's going through, the old man didn't come back to life but his wife did a few years back and returned to the world of the dead after the final blossom had dropped, he was only in one scene that lasted perhaps two minutes. Hope that didn't sound confusing and wish we had seen him a bit more in prior shows.
Word spread quickly among Kota's friends that he's gone for good. As I just mentioned he's not dead yet but Kota had no clue when his final moment may arrive and wanted to spend it alone which thankfully didn't happen. Of course his friends were heartbroken over Kota's disappearance but not overly so as these days they're 24 year old adults versus being teens when he died. Mei was naturally the person affected most by Kota leaving again but then again seeing her love one more time made things that much more bearable.
There's two main reasons why Kota was 'summoned' back to the the world of living. One was to help reunite his friends who had grown so distant over the seven years since his death, it worked as the four friends are closer than ever. Especially Ryohei and Haruka who are soon to become an item. Kota's return affected Iori more than anyone else and he grew into such a respectable person in such a short amount of time. Above is Iori with the mayor of Yagima, Akaike, who denied he had anything to do with Kota's death which was a lie.
To avenge his friend's death Kota did something not many others would have done. He revealed to the press that his father, who owned the city hospital, had bribed Akaike with 100 million yen to acquire the rights to where the cherry blossom tree was located to build the new hospital. For that Akaike was arrested and there were also some drunk driving charges pending now, one was when he forced Kota's bike off the road. But because of Iori's splash there may not be a new hospital and who knows what will become of his future but Iori did the right thing, with that the reasons Kota had come back to life were fulfilled.
There was another reason for Iori making that announcement to the press and that was to possibly bring Kota out of hiding. It worked perfectly as Kota contacted him on the day he was probably going to perish and wondered what the hell was he thinking?! Iori told him to forget about that, Kota has one final responsibility in the world which is to meet Mei one last time under the cherry tree. That tree is coming close to losing all of it's blossoms so the pair needed to hurry, Kota at the most has about an hour left in his new life.
As you can see above the love birds did make it to the tree in the nick of time and very little was said save for that they loved each other. For the first time ever the pair embraced and kissed, after Mei backed away from him and opened her eyes Kota was gone for good. That scene could have been done in a overly sappy way to draw tears from us but that didn't happen, Mei kept her composure and after that sad but inspiring event there were only a little over two minutes to go in the series.
It's a year later and Mei seems to have her life back in order,. She's returned to living in Tokyo and is working in an office, quite well too it seems. It's the anniversary of Kota's second death and she made a trip back to her hometown for the occasion. There's some good news as the cherry tree is still standing and under it Mei met her old mates once again, Kota's return did reunite them and the four whose lives were going nowhere all now have such brighter futures.
Few recaps back did mention that this is a better series to watch for a viewer than to read about it. So many little things happened which are hard to describe plus there was some excellent scenery from the Yagami area. Slower paced dramas usually aren't my cup of tea but this is one I enjoyed quite a bit, will give it a high rating of 8.8/10 and it may have been a nine except for a few slow stretches. Have no clue what to watch next, do prefer shorter dramas like this that have 5-8 episodes with the shows being around thirty minutes, sure I can find a few others that have been overlooked. This was Marie's best performance to date and I'll watch anything she's in as long as it's subbed. Her new series started last night, have it already and really hoping that it'll be subbed.
No comments:
Post a Comment