Recap
We see disjointed moments: A man sets up a camera on a dock over water reflecting the starry night sky. He sees a woman looking at the stars and takes her picture. On-screen text says: It was a starry night when I first met you.
He kisses her, she knocks him away, and he comes in for a slower kiss.
The woman is Suzu, a gynecologist. She works at a clinic with Sasaki, a handsome 45-year-old rookie who knocks over urine samples, makes awkward faces, and babbles about the miracle of birth.
We catch up to the first scene. Suzu sets up camp alone and gets drunk. Her encounter with Issei is awkward, she doesn’t realize he’s deaf. He takes her picture and makes himself at home at her campsite. He also gives her his scarf when she’s cold and takes care of her fire. We see the kisses again, including the slower, more welcome one.
Abruptly we go from the romantic kiss to a hungover Suzu waking up. As he leaves Issei signs something to her. At home, she figures out it was “I cleaned up your vomit. Idiot.”
Suzu gets a call that her mother has passed away. She’s dazed and emotionless at the funeral. Relatives ask awkward questions about her leaving her previous job, moving, and her mother’s health. She escapes to sit alone, but Issei shows up with a box with stars on it.
Issei works for a company called Polaris, which does Estate Liquidation for the Departed. Before meeting with Suzu, he and his co-worker/friend Haru clean a deceased older man’s house. Haru can sign, and they get into an argument about what to do with an AV (porn) tape that Issei finds. Issei thinks the man lived a joyful life.
Back with Suzu, she explains to Issei that she’s worried, she hadn’t seen her mother lately and thinks she was lonely. Issei uses a phone and tablet to communicate, and the box holds keepsakes that show Suzu her mother wasn’t lonely, but living a full life.
Suzu starts to cry and Issei pats her on the back.
Suzu comes to work rather than take a break. When a patient in labor calls for her dead mother, Suzu turns it into a breathing exercise. She remembers the times she called for her own mother, from when she was a little girl to when she was sued by a patient whose wife died.
The nurses notice Suzu was more passionate than usual, and like it.
Sasaki gets too many rice balls and shares them with Suzu. He won’t tell Suzu why he decided to become a doctor late in life but wants to be a cool doctor like her.
Charlie, a young man with pink hair who says “Yay Yay Woah Woah”, brings a cake the director ordered to the clinic.
With Haru translating, Issei’s boss Chiaki scolds him for keeping too much client stuff, which isn’t part of their job. Issei says he learned this from her, and we get a flashback of Chiaki talking to a distraught Issei.
Sasaki visits his family’s grave.
Suzu tries to return Issei’s scarf. A food truck guy laughs at her and Haru offers to pass it along himself, but Suzu wants to give it in person. Chiaki tells her where to find Issei taking pictures.
Suzu finds him by the sea and returns the scarf. He sniffs it and seems annoyed. She scolds him but signs “Thank you,” explaining in words he can’t hear that it’s for what he did with her mother’s belongings. Then she signs, “But your kiss, though, wasn’t that great.” Which makes him smile.
Thoughts
There’s so much setup in this first episode. The biggest thing is the dramatic contrast between life and death, which Issei’s boss Chiaki comments on. Our female lead works in birth, and her mother dies, which brings our hero, whose job involves dealing with death.
The contrasts don’t end there. Suzu is confident and cool, scolding Sasaki for losing his own cool and downplaying her achievements. Issei is more animated and vibrant, fighting back against his boss and arguing to look past death to the lives the people lived. Both have backstories that are only hinted at in this episode.
The nurses are awesome and I wish I could write more about them in the recap without it bloating up. I’m sure I’ll revisit in later episodes.
There are also a lot of allusions to the night sky. Issei’s name in kanji is 一星, the second character there means ‘star’. His company is Polaris (in English), a reference to the north star which is so stable in its location that it can be used for navigation. There are more references that I’ll include as the show goes on.
The opening credits and the visuals of this seaside Japanese town (that I don’t think ever gets named) are beautiful. There’s something slightly melancholic about them, and the show also has an interesting heavy-yet-light mood fitting for the subject matter.