Eternal Yesterday - Season 1

Although I liked ”Minato's Coin Laundry” and ”Takara-kun to Amagi-kun” a lot, "Eternal Yesterday" is by far my favorite Japanese BL production of 2022. In this heartbreaking BL series, which is completely different from all other BL series, Oumi Mitsuru (Inoue Sora) falls in love with the ”living corpse” of his friend Yamada Koichi who was killed in a car accident (Komiya Rio, who also played a support role in ”Takara-kun to Amagi-kun”). Koichi can only be seen by the people who think of him, which implies that he becomes increasingly invisible from episode to episode as his classmates and people who used to know him tend to forget about him. This also means that the viewer knows that Koichi will disappear even from Mitsuru in the end. But when it actually happens, it is still a shock. This is a beautiful love story, and despite the angst that is always there and that makes it bitter sweet, it is a masterpiece of storytelling. In 2022, there was no other series that made me cry as much as this.

This is the story of a young couple, and how they met is told in flashbacks. The story though is that one is fatally injured in an accident and this is the story of their last four days together before he succumbs to his injuries. Watching it you keep hoping for a miracle and he survives, but that never happens. The last episode jumps ahead five years to show how the one guy is struggling to get on with his life without the love of his life. It is a moving story, but also extremely sad.