"What in Winter, That Thing in Spring"... The Strange Resonance of the Title The title, What in Winter, That Thing in Spring (literal translation), which drips with the unique sensibility of Japanese dramas, exudes an unusual aura from the start. A typical romance drama would likely use intuitive words like "Love," "Dating," or "Excitement," but this drama hangs up a vague and abstract title borrowing the senses of the seasons. It seems to be trying to talk about an emotion that lingers on the tip of the tongue but is hard to explain in words. The moment you play the drama, you realize that this ambiguity is the identity of this work. Without a flashy opening or stimulating events, a unique atmosphere that seems to exist somewhere between the cold air of winter and the listlessness of spring fills the screen. It is the start of a very unfamiliar drama that brings a wave of curiosity and bewilderment simultaneously, making you wonder, "What on earth is this story about?"
A Space Where Noise Disappeared, Static Opening in a Coin Laundry The first scene of the drama begins late at night in a coin laundry where silence flows. Without a single common background music (BGM) track, only the mechanical sound of the washing machines spinning fills the space. Sugisaki Hana, who plays the female protagonist Tsuchida Ayana, is listening to music with earphones plugged in, waiting for her laundry to finish. Her expression looks bored, or perhaps deep in thought. This static time flowing without a single line of dialogue seems to herald the "beauty of empty space" that the drama will show in the future. It is an opening where you can glimpse the director's intention to capture even the breathing of the characters and the air of the space on camera, excluding exaggerated acting or direction.
Encounter with a Stranger, and the Medium Called Music A man suddenly enters the empty laundry. The subtle tension and awkwardness felt when left alone with another person in a narrow and enclosed space are transmitted through the screen. Ayana worries that the sound of music leaking from her earphones might disturb the man. To her cautious question, "Can you hear the sound?", the man answers indifferently, "It's fine." This short and dry conversation is the beginning of the relationship between the two. In a normal drama, a fateful eye contact or a dramatic event would have occurred, but this drama forms a connection through extremely realistic and trivial contact points.
"Can I Listen on the Speaker?" An Eccentric Proposal that Breaks the Ice The scene that follows is quite interesting. The man asks Ayana, "If it's okay, can we listen to it together on the speaker?" Sharing music with a stranger, and listening to songs together in a silent laundry at that, is a quite romantic yet unique situation. As Ayana accepts the man's proposal, the invisible wall between the two crumbles, and conversation begins to flow. The process of exploring each other's tastes and relieving wariness through the common denominator of music is drawn naturally like flowing water.
People Who Came to the Laundry Despite Having Washing Machines at Home, 'That Certain Day' They Shared While talking, the two discover a surprising commonality. The fact is that both of them have perfectly fine washing machines at home. Nevertheless, they bothered to pack their laundry and come out to the coin laundry. Their dialogue, "Even if you have a washing machine at home, there are days when you just want to do this," represents the inexplicable emptiness or desire for deviation felt by modern people. Not simply to do laundry, but the desire to stare blankly at the spinning washing machine, escaping from repetitive daily life for a moment. Just sharing that subtle and hard-to-explain emotion brings the two rapidly closer.
To the Hairdresser's House, A Strange Current That Is and Isn't Romance Leaving the laundry, the two naturally head to the man's house. It turns out the man's job is a hairdresser, so he really had no reason to use a coin laundry. Ayana's action of readily following a stranger to his house seems somewhat bold. From the viewer's perspective, one expects genre tropes like "Is a full-blown romance starting now?" or "Will it lead to a one-night stand?" However, the drama pleasantly sidesteps these expectations. Despite entering the extremely private space of a man's house, instead of hot sparks, a calm and plain, perhaps even dry, air flows between the two.
Reversed Gender Roles? The Man Who Refuses a Kiss and the Flustered Woman This is where the uniqueness of this drama explodes. Usually, a composition of an active man and a passive woman is common, but they are the opposite. While Ayana senses the subtle atmosphere and actively approaches by bringing up the topic of a kiss, the man rather steps back. The man's attitude of drawing a line, saying "Let's not kiss" or "Let's get to know each other slowly," confuses not only Ayana but also the viewers watching. Is it a reflection of Japan's "Herbivore Men" culture, or is it this man's unique tendency? The man's attitude, infinitely passive and defensive in front of physical intimacy, completely destroys the grammar of existing romance dramas and grants a strange realism.
Jump to One Year Later, Changed Partner But Repeating Pattern The drama jumps over a period of one year. Ayana is now meeting another man. The setting this time is even a motel. Given the location, you might think it would be definitely different this time, but the situation repeats like déjà vu. They lie side by side on the bed, the conversation flows well, and the atmosphere is good, but at the decisive moment, the man avoids physical contact. When Ayana tries to attempt a kiss, the man slips away like an eel again. The attitude of men who seem to want only emotional communion rather than a physical relationship, and the appearance of Ayana frustrated(?) in front of it, evoke laughter and bitterness at the same time.
Novelist Ayana Recording Experiences, The Essence of 'Relationships' She Explores The setting that Ayana's job is a novelist is an important key penetrating all these situations. She transfers these bizarre and repetitive love stories that happened to her into writing. Perhaps for her, these meetings feel less like a process to find love and more like coverage activities to explore the incomprehensibility of human relationships. A relationship where physical communication is castrated, intimacy built only with words without skinship. Ayana asks herself while writing. "Why on earth are men these days like this?" or "What is true intimacy?" Her novel is the question the drama throws to the viewers.
Between Winter and Spring, The Charm of Ambiguity Having watched only the first episode, the lingering effect What in Winter, That Thing in Spring gives is substantial. Although it wears the outer shell of a romance drama, inside, aspects of a psychological drama dealing with the loneliness of modern people, the absence of communication, and new aspects of male-female relationships are glimpsed. The director does not force a clear conclusion or hot emotions. Like the title, it seems to say to enjoy the ambiguous and tepid temperature itself felt at the boundary between the end of winter and the beginning of spring. What will Ayana discover in relationships with these incomprehensible men? I want to check the conclusion of this unique "relationship experiment" through the remaining episodes. For those tired of stimulating, spicy dramas, I recommend this drama, which is bland but keeps coming to mind like Pyongyang Naengmyeon.
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