{"id":18036,"date":"2022-12-11T17:06:21","date_gmt":"2022-12-11T09:06:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/?p=18036"},"modified":"2022-12-11T20:20:41","modified_gmt":"2022-12-11T12:20:41","slug":"2967-replaying-first-love-over-and-over-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/?p=18036","title":{"rendered":"[2967] Replaying First Love, over and over again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Do you remember, a time before the new millennium, before the internet was a real thing, when a movie or a series you were watching that you liked very much, were coming to an end, and you wished it had not? Its end created a feeling of loss inside of you that could only be filled up with a replay. Yet, there was no chance for that, because it was on TV, or playing at the cinema, or it was on a rental tape you must return today.<\/p>\n<p>If you were lucky, you would own the tape and replay it to your heart&#8217;s content. I remember moments when I had it and kept replaying a particular scene or two. I had Disney&#8217;s <em>Aladdin<\/em>, and became an expert at rewinding em to almost the exact time when <em>A Whole New World<\/em> would start. When I was even younger, I had a Walkman filled up with Sesame Street&#8217;s songs, that I kept shooting for <em>C is for Cookie<\/em> a hundred times or more.<\/p>\n<p>I have been going through that feeling again recently after watching the final episode of <em>First Love<\/em>, a short Japanese series inspired by Utada Hikaru&#8217;s song of the same title. That song was widely circulated via illegal mp3 (was there ever a legal mp3?) among adopters of the 1990s internet, downloaded maybe from Kaaza, or mIRC, or Napster, or from some random server in wild wild web.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"?First Love ????????First Love????? - Netflix\" width=\"580\" height=\"326\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7U7rb3OXo3c?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The series is full of beautiful shots, and moments, but the one I have been returning over and over again, thanks to Netflix, is the final scene of Episode 8. Spoiler here (<strong>a big one indeed<\/strong>), but it is the scene where Yae Noguchi, a victim of memory loss, finally remembers Harumichi Namiki&#8217;s significance in her life, and tears up. Her sudden recollection is triggered by a song of their first kiss from two decades ago in the late 1990s.<\/p>\n<p>All the best threads of the series end at that particular scene, which, I think, can move the hearts of stone.<\/p>\n<p>Episode 8, <em>The Proust Effect On A Certain Afternoon<\/em>, is not the final part, but I think it should have. The final episode tries to create an <em>and-they-live-happily-ever-after ending<\/em>, but I feel it is an afterthought. As somebody said to me, most first loves, ends sadly. That makes Episode 8 all the more powerful, and closer to reality.<\/p>\n<p>So, I pretend Episode 9 does not exist.<\/p>\n<p>p\/s \u2014 the guy is from Samurai-X!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Do you remember, a time before the new millennium, before the internet was a real thing, when a movie or a series you were watching that you liked very much, were coming to an end, and you wished it had not? Its end created a feeling of loss inside of you that could only be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[2003,2004],"class_list":["post-18036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-first-love","tag-hikaru-utada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18036"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18044,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18036\/revisions\/18044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}