TV Series Spotlight - Koisenu Futari
After mentioning how much I like this show in yesterday's blog post, I thought it'd only make sense to follow it up with a spotlight of its own. Here goes!
Koisenu Futari (2022) is a Japanese TV drama series follows two aromantic-asexual people as they help each other figure out how to navigate life as people who do not fall in love. Sakuko Kodama is a woman who enjoys her work in marketing for a supermarket company, but has been feeling increased societal pressure from the expectations to fall in love and get married. She has a chance meeting with Satoru Takahashi, an employee at one of the supermarkets for the same company who enjoys working with vegetables. Sakuko ends up realizing her own aromantic-asexual identity after encountering Takahashi's blog expressing his own thoughts as an aroace person, bringing the pair further into each other's lives. And after Sakuko's plans to move out of her family home and live with a friend fall through, she and Takahashi make a mutual agreement to live together in the house he has been living in on his own. They grow to support each other in affirming their aromantic-asexual identities and experiences and seeking out their own happiness in life, often encouraging or advocating for each other when they have to clear up misunderstandings or educate people (including the fun extended cast of family, friends, and co-workers around them) around them about the nature of their relationship or their identities as aroace people.
This is probably one of my favourite representations of aroace experiences, and it was definitely the first time I saw a representation of the experience that I really related to. Particularly in the questions, fears, and doubts that its protagonists grapple with: do I really have to accept that I will be alone in life unless I get married or fall in love, or is something else possible? Even without romance or sex involved, are there people I can rely on to take care of me and support me, and who will want me in their life to do the same for them? These are lonely questions, and I love how compassionately the show explores them. Aroace identities, and aromantic experiences in particular, can be stereotyped as cold, inhuman, or unfeeling for the idea of "not being able to experience or feel romantic love". But I love that the series shows that Sakuko and Takahashi are both kind people living full and happy lives that are far from empty or joyless, that the lives they lead are in fact full of love and passion for the people, places, and world around them (just not the romantic kind). The show humanizes them so unquestionably (I find their portrayals delightfully likeable and charismatic), showing their ordinary ups and downs over big things and simple things, just like anyone else.
I think the show is also overall just a really great way to introduce someone to the concept of aromanticism and asexuality, as I think it does explain these concepts intuitively enough throughout without simply becoming just an "what is the aromanticism and asexuality 101" thing, either. While the story does include a bit of that early on in the beginning, setting up the crucial groundwork for the rest of its premise, I think it does a good job of expanding further to explore other complex challenges of navigating aroace experiences beyond the initial identity self-discovery phase. Plus, the show is only 8 half-hour episodes long, 4 hours in total to watch the whole thing! I'm a big fan of the show and I wish there was more like it, so here's hoping there will continue to be!