The new drama Merry Berry Love, starring Ji Chang-wook and heating up the Japanese archipelago, has unveiled itself, delivering both fresh excitement and a pleasant sense of déjà vu to viewers. Watching a man, who has lost everything and been scarred, escape the flashy, cold city to hide in an unfamiliar rural seaside village surrounded by beautiful nature, and slowly heal as he intertwines with warm-hearted people, naturally overlaps heavily with his previous work, Welcome to Samdal-ri. The warm sentiment of that drama, which served as a perfect refuge for those wanting to catch their breath under the weight of life, is fully reflected in his Japanese debut work, heralding a heartwarming impression.
Over the years, actor Ji Chang-wook has built his own solid and unrivaled filmography, radiating a rugged charm in heavy genre pieces, striking action works, or intense, dark thrillers. Amidst his relentless acting journey, Welcome to Samdal-ri, set against the human-centric backdrop of Jeju Island, was a work with a somewhat heterogeneous yet extremely soft texture. Ironically, thanks to its unique, comfortable, and harmless sensibility, it established itself as the most widely loved mainstream hit of his entire filmography. Merry Berry Love accurately pierces through this public need, fully utilizing Ji Chang-wook's softest and most affectionate gaze to form a universal consensus that transcends borders.
Recently, the Asian video content market is experiencing a distinct renaissance where co-productions between South Korea and Japan are more active than ever. The explosive global star power of Korean actors and the unique emotional directing of Japan perfectly satisfy each other's needs, creating a positive synergy. However, it is also true that domestic fans watching these collaborative projects had one lingering complaint. When Korean actors entered Japanese dramas, they had to deliver their lines exclusively in Japanese with painstaking effort for perfect localization, whereas when Japanese actors appeared in Korean dramas, asymmetrical depictions where they continued to use their native Japanese frequently appeared.
However, this new work, Merry Berry Love, takes a highly unique and unconventional directing approach specifically regarding this chronic linguistic depiction, refreshingly quenching the viewers' longstanding thirst. Surprisingly, this drama brings to the forefront a magical setup where the male and female protagonists stubbornly use their respective mother tongues, yet their conversation flows naturally. Instead of forcing awkward Japanese, Ji Chang-wook maximizes the character's vitality by delivering his lines in fluent, emotionally rich Korean. His counterpart, the Japanese actress, also comfortably responds in Japanese, capturing the inherent charm of each native language on screen without any compromise.
Of course, this is not an unrealistic development where the Japanese characters perfectly translate and understand the exact grammar or vocabulary of Korean. They catch the general emotion and nuance by combining the other person's desperate gaze, the subtle pitch of their voice, and the contextual situation they are currently in, astonishingly keeping the communication going. This serves as an excellent metaphor intuitively showing that sincerity and eye contact between people can be a much more powerful communication tool than the shallow shell of language. The ping-pong dialogue of these people, whose essential hearts strangely reach each other despite the frustration of a language barrier, grants a delightful vitality and unexpected heart-fluttering excitement to the play.
In this unique universe, the male protagonist "Lee Yoo-bin," vividly brought to life by Ji Chang-wook, is a self-made venture CEO boasting outstanding business acumen. He was a perfect figure walking a solid path, showing off his public recognition and overflowing confidence to the point of personally modeling for his own brand's advertisements. However, his glamorous success story, which seemed like it would last forever, shatters into pieces due to the agonizing betrayal of his closest and most trusted employee. Facing a miserable situation where the management rights of his sound company are handed over to someone else overnight, and vicious debt collectors flock to his office, he cruelly plummets to the very bottom of his life.
Pushed to the edge of a cliff with nowhere left to hide under the Seoul sky, he discovers an unexpected fact while digging through past documents. It was the unbelievable fact that across the sea, in a quiet rural village in Japan, there existed a small plot of ancestral land that he could legally inherit. Feeling like he was grabbing the last lifeline of his life, Lee Yoo-bin throws off his flashy CEO suit and hastily boards a flight to Japan, fleeing the eyes of his vicious creditors to hide in an unfamiliar rural island village.
Waiting for him on this unfamiliar foreign island is the female protagonist "Shirahama Karin," played with a uniquely bright energy by Mio Imada. Having inherited a large plot of land from her late grandfather, she is a spirited youth who silently breathes with nature and earnestly cultivates her own strawberry farm without any lingering attachment to a glamorous city life. The reason Karin chose to grow strawberries—which require a lot of care—out of countless other crops stems from her own philosophical and warm romanticism: "Strawberries are the mirror that most honestly reflects the change of seasons and the flow of time."
The unforgettable first meeting between these two people, who have lived on completely different orbits, begins with a delightful yet fierce squabble at a ticket booth to secure the only boat ride into the island. Standing their ground without yielding an inch to snatch the one remaining ticket, the two passionately argue in their respective mother tongues, unable to understand each other, before finally settling the dispute with the universally understood game of "rock-paper-scissors." Even amidst the mix of Korean and Japanese echoing in the air, their competitive spirit and sense of injustice communicate as perfectly as telepathy. This comical first encounter is the ultimate iconic scene that lightens the mood of the early episodes.
The narratives of the charming supporting characters hovering around them also richly fill out the drama's romance line. The mysterious character "Park Gu-nam," played by actor Nam Yoon-su, initially acts slyly pretending to be a perfect local Japanese man with a fluent accent. However, he is quickly outed as a Korean by Lee Yoo-bin's sharp, quick-witted observation, showcasing delightful banter back and forth throughout. The pure romance of Park Gu-nam—who fell in love at first sight with the refreshing cafe owner "Mizuno Mari" (played by Rinka Kumada) by chance during a trip, and impulsively unpacked his bags to settle on this unfamiliar island—breathes the fresh vitality typical of a sub-romance into the play.
Lee Yoo-bin and Shirahama Karin, who growled at each other with the worst first impressions, end up hiding behind the excuse of a language barrier to actually reveal their most honest emotions and scars to each other without filters. The romance of the two, who get their hands dirty together in the strawberry field, share their daily lives, and slowly open the doors to their closed hearts, is currently airing as a Wednesday drama on Japan's Nippon TV and is heating up the small screen. Proving that explosive response, it set a remarkable record by ranking #1 in global viewership for the premiere episode of a Japanese live-action work on the global Disney+ platform. On a cold winter night, if you are exhausted by provocative narratives and want to fully feel the simple, warm, healing sensibility unique to Japanese dramas, this is an appealing masterpiece well worth binge-watching without hesitation.
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