Drama Review: Tatta Hitotsu no Koi (2006)

Tatta Hitotsu no Koi or Only One Love

• Year: 2006
• Episodes: 10 episodes, 45 minutes each
• Country Japan
• Genre: Romance 
• Starring: Kazuya Kamenashi, Ayase Haruka, Koki Tanaka, Yuta Hiraoka, Erika Toda
• You can find a list of my Japanese drama reviews on my Japanese Drama and Movie Reviews page.

My Story Synopsis for Tatta Hitotsu no Koi

The setting is in Yokohama, near the bayfront. Hiroto Kanzaki ( Kazuya Kamenashi) is tired. He spends every day hard at work at the small ship repair factory that he inherited from his father, along with all the financial worries and burdens that go along with it. His mother has to work as a hostess at night because at least that brings in extra income, and his younger brother Ren suffers from asthma so severe that sometimes he's confined to a wheelchair.

Not that Hiroto resents his family. He adores them. They are his all, his reason for going to work each day. But he's forgotten to live his life for himself and he's forgotten how to smile and how to dream. Having never gone to college, Hiroto is destined to be under-privileged his whole life, trapped by his circumstances.

When Hiroto encounters wealthy jewelry store heiress Nao Tsukioka ( Ayase Haruka), his future starts to change. Nao is a forthright girl who speaks her mind because she knows life is too short to spend time wondering what other people think or have them worrying about what she thinks. She would rather just say it outright. And she's fallen for Hiroto, hard. Much to the horror of her family and the concern of his mother.

A pair of star-crossed lovers, are they strong enough to fight tradition, class status, and familial expectations and make a life together?

My Thoughts on Tatta Hitotsu no Koi

Tatta Hitotsu no Koi is one of Kamenashi's more popular dramas from his youth. And I admit, the role suits him really well. I remember watching it back when I first started in dramaland, but it had been so long that I decided to watch it again. It's what I was expecting, both good and bad.

The Acting

Kazuya Kamenashi is a member of the Japanese boy band KAT-TUN and a fairly popular Japanese idol. Kamenashi excels in the role of a broody boy with a little bit of a past, so playing Hiroto was right up his alley. He gave such a solid performance here, lots of snark and lots of sorrowful half-smiles and tortured looks. In 2006, Kamenashi was only 20, and he had so much energy. He's such a lively and charismatic performer. It's impossible to not watch him when he's on the screen playing such a fantastic, broody romantic male lead.

Actress Ayase Haruka was very cute in her role. Very mild and mellow and adorable, just like the ideal Japanese girl. I'm less drawn to this type of heroine, honestly, because she can very easily become a doormat (I'm fonder of spunky heroines like Shizuku in My Little Monster), but for the purposes of this drama, it worked pretty well. Especially since she will speak up and be honest when the occasion calls for it. There was a nice hidden strength in Nao that Haruka-san's performance really enhanced.

Together, Kamenashi and Haruka-san had great chemistry. You can believe they're in love, even if you don't always know why. I stand by the romantic relationships that don't necessarily have an obvious reason for why they're in love. Sometimes, people just click, and Kamenashi and Haruka-san made their roles click.

The secondary actors were terrific, including Koki Tanaka who was also a member of KAT-TUN and Yuta Hiraoka as Hiroto's best friends. Why Yuta's character never ends up with a girl, I will NEVER know. Of all of them, he's probably the one I would have picked. And then Erika Toda as Nao's best friend. All three of them gave solid, believable performances. I will say that Tanaka-san was exceptionally silly.

Hiroto's mother and little brother Ran are pretty terrific too, especially Ran. The actors playing Nao's parents and older brother were good, but I didn't actually like any of them for reasons I'll get into in the story section of my review.

The Story

Tatta Hitotsu no Koi is a bit of a slow-burn drama. Keep that in mind. It's like sitting down to read Pride and Prejudice or Jane Eyre. You just know that it's going to take you a while because the story takes a while to tell. And that's okay.

There are elements I love in this story and elements that drive me crazy.

We'll start with what I love.

Nao and Hiroto. They're amazing. The character design, the performances, all of it. Their love story is precisely what attracts me to all of those bittersweet stories that deal with relationships that want desperately to work but the world seems stacked against them until the very end when magic happens. Their part is a really good story. I also really love Hiroto's brother.

And now for what drove me crazy.

There are some issues, yes, some issues. Nao's parents. I get the whole "I want the best for my daughter" thing, but Hiroto isn't a delinquent or a punk. He's a hard-working young man. Just like the guy they set her up with who also happens to work for Daddy's jewelry company. The case they make for this other guy could be made for Hiroto too and that just made me so mad because Hiroto's lower-class status had become such an issue that her parents were blind to Hiroto's good points. 

The emotional blackmail. That's kind of emotional abuse, actually. Nao's family tries to guilt her into giving up Hiroto because Nao's older brother gave her bone marrow for her leukemia when she was a child. As if that means he now has the right to run her life? She's twenty, get over it. I spent quite a bit of time fuming. Some of it may have resulted from Kamenashi playing Hiroto, I don't know, but the injustice made me want to smack heads together.

There's a lot of other common tropes used in Tatta Hitotsu no Koi. The old girlfriend resurrects with her delinquent boyfriend. There's a kidnapping attempt. There's a runaway attempt. There's company embezzlement. There's blackmail. So lots of silliness, but to be fair, a lot of these are not necessarily Asian entertainment tropes. I've seen many American young adult movies or television shows that use some of these. It's just popular insanity.

During the first 5 episodes, there are fewer tropes utilized and by that point, I was completely hooked. The story is imperfect, yes, but it's a bit like a soap opera. If you go into it knowing that, then you'll be fine. And unlike soap operas, Tatta Hitotsu no Koi only has 10 episodes instead of 300.

The Screenplay

I think you know what I'm going to say here. The screenplays are adequate. But there are too many generalizations and too many tropes used. The best moments are between Nao and Hiroto and Hiroto and either his family or his friends. Those are pretty great scenes and really generated a nice warmth and realism into the story that I deeply appreciated. I wish I could say that for every scene, but oh well.

Objectionable Content

Very little. Nao and Hiroto spend the night together on a boat, but we do not see any of that scene, there are some moderate kisses I would say, there are some fight scenes at which Kamenashi excels because it's just so fun watching him get a little violent, quite a few drinking scenes but all of the characters are of legal drinking age, some suggestive conversation between the guys regarding girls. Emotional blackmail is viewed as an acceptable means of control within a family.

All the Feels

And because I love music videos, here's a GORGEOUS one for Tatta Hitotsu no Koi from DemonicLullabyMvs on Youtube. It shows all the amazing reasons to watch this drama. Kamenashi's smile, OH MY GOODNESS. His trademark, for sure.

Because Tatta Hitotsu no Koi stars Kamenashi, I love it, tropes, flaws and all. It's really a beautiful train wreck, like a lot of good romantic YA fiction. It has a flair for the overly dramatic, but again, that's kind of Kamenashi's specialty so it's what I expect from him and why I love him. As I promised in my review of his show Second Love, you can tell that he's incredibly skinny here. Bony cheekbones, very, but he's still good looking in 2006, a promise of the gorgeous man he turned into by the time he made it into Second Love in 2015.

The subtitles, unfortunately, are sub-standard. That's disappointing, but they're not the worst I've seen and you still get the gist of what's happening. I know enough Japanese now, though, to recognize when the subs are wrong, so that's frustrating.

On the whole, it's a tragic, darling series. I love all of the little scenes with Hiroto and Nao, like when they're flashing lights to each other from her balcony and his bedroom window. Or when he wins her a prize at a local festival and she's so jazzed about it. Or when he misses grabbing her as she's falling into a swimming pool and chooses to fall in with her even though he didn't have to. It's just so achingly adorable and youthful.