Hidamari ga Kikoeru (2024)

A feel good for the soul

High Points
Visuals: The cinematography was serene and aesthetic, just like most other Japanese BLs. They have a knack for making visuals pleasing to the audience's eyes.

Acting: The acting was phenomenal, pulling you in from the very beginning.

Representation and Relatability: The characters had vulnerabilities and insecurities that they learned to accept and overcome, making them incredibly relatable. From small details to certain personality traits and circumstances, there was something for everyone to connect with.

Endearing and Humorous: The drama kept you engaged throughout with its endearing characters and humorous moments, making it easy to binge-watch in one sitting.

Slow Burn Realism: The romance was a slow burn, focusing on the lives of the main characters beyond their relationship. They grappled with their own personal issues and navigated life together, creating a more realistic portrayal.

Thought-Provoking Themes: The drama explored thought-provoking themes that made you reflect on things you hadn't considered before.

Portrayal of Disability: The portrayal of the main character's disability, being hard of hearing, was well-done. It showcased the challenges faced in an ableist society and how prejudice and systemic barriers can shape one's mindset.

Low Points
Lack of Communication: While the lack of communication was partially due to the main character's disability, it was still a frustrating plot device at times.

Inconsistent Pacing: The pacing was inconsistent, with the first few episodes being fast and engaging, followed by slower episodes filled with flashbacks. This was a problem even in the manga.

Angle Kiss and Lack of Intimacy: While this wasn't a major issue for me, as I enjoyed the strong plot and chemistry between the characters, it might bother some viewers who prefer more intimate scenes.

Unsatisfactory Ending: While the ending was heartwarming, it felt rushed and could have been more fulfilling (or maybe I'm just being fussy pants)

Overall
This drama has a specific target audience. If you're looking for a fast-paced, fairy tale-esque romance, this might not be your cup of tea. However, if you appreciate thought-provoking themes, slow-burn relationships, and a focus on personal growth, it's worth a watch. The series delves into topics like friendship, love, disability, and mental health, exploring how characters overcome life's challenges. While romance is present, it's not the central focus. Instead, the emphasis is on the characters' journeys and their connections to each other. This makes it a heartwarming drama that encourages reflection and offers unique perspectives.

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YEARNER OF THE YEAR: Kohei

The series covered the first two editions of the manga and despite being a 25-minute series with 12 episodes, I think they did great in modifying how they will portray the characters and the pacing of the story. I’m not really a fan of the slow-burn trope love story but given the character of Kohei who has a hearing disability and Taichi being unaware of his feelings, it’s inevitable that proper communication would be the hindrance to their relationship hence, slow-burn pacing.

It was really satisfying when Taichi confessed his feelings to Kohei. He finally accepted that his decision to become a better person— to dream and to have a purpose in life— was because of Kohei. I just wished they KISSED considering how they yearned for each other and the viewers deserved it also after waiting for months. Yes, they hugged but it felt so empty.

The series needs a continuation— a season 2. That glimpse at the end, of how they flirt with each other, I want to see more of that and how they are going to manage their relationship as a couple. I want to see their sweet moments!!! I'm tired of crying and being frustrated every episode!!!

Also, the OST captured the essence of the scenes!!!

Romance is not dead thanks to Kohei and Taichi.

If there’s no second season of this series, I want to see another Motoki-Tora BL pleek!

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A Conversation on "Hidamari ga Kikoeru"

The following conversation took place this week between me (a gay man) and a friend of mine (a straight woman who’s hard of hearing). We sometimes watch BLs together. (Note: This conversation was first posted on Reddit, but felt more appropriate here.)

ME: So, what do you think (of Hidamari)?

SHE: What do *I* think? With all this praise from everyone, everywhere, all at once, you’d think this was the second coming of Christ!

ME: Tell me about it. I think there has been a sprinkling of healthy scepticism on Reddit, but it’s out and out war on the pages of MDL.

SHE: Let me guess. Between those who think it’s a disability drama, and those who think it’s BL?

ME: Bingo!

SHE: Are there any who think it’s bad at both?

ME: Ummm… you?

SHE: Bingo!

ME: There is also that other, internecine war on MDL: between the mostly young, mostly female population who want a chaste, aching BL, and the older gays who, understandably, don’t want the sex erased from homosexuality.

SHE: Well, you know whose side I am on.

ME: Mine, I hope. Anyway, do spill the tea.

SHE: As you know, I don’t think art needs to be representational at all. It is not anyone’s duty to represent anything. But, insofar as people think that this show ‘represents’ disability, it is a miserable failure. Not least because it is primarily a plot device, whose purpose is to sow misunderstanding and miscommunication between our boys. As if Japanese characters don’t do enough of that to themselves already. Apparently, deaf people can’t communicate because… well… they can’t hear well. Get it? How original! Have you ever known me to be non-communicative?

ME: If only.

SHE: Might I remind you that you gave me your number? Anyway, I know I'm oversimplifying matters... but not that much. The idea that people hard of hearing cannot reach out, or do not reach out, out of fear, failure of confidence, or low self-esteem, is just so old and tired, I'm quite sick of it. Our lives are richer than that. There is nothing we want more than be part of the world, and we are often better communicators for it. I don't know if Kohei's syndrome was more cultural or physiological, but either way, he made me quite angry with all that self-pity. A highly unattractive trait in a man. At least Taichi brought a measure of joy and innocence into the drama -- and Kobayashi is an amazing actor -- but soon I grew weary of his naïveté too. He's so dense that even light would bend around him. I was patient enough of all this for the first few episodes, but then they brought in Maya...

ME: Who, by the way, has a lot of defenders.

SHE: Of course she does. Another straight, evil woman who comes in between the boys in a BL? It's revolutionary, I tell you.

ME: She transcends that trope, apparently...

SHE: By, let me guess, being deaf and having a sad past? Yay! Deaf people can be evil too! I feel seen! That’s true representation! Trope? What trope?

ME: I get it. I get it. Also, it's not as if either of us are against tropes, when done well. I seem to remember you did love Heart and Li Ming in Moonlight Chicken.

SHE: Oh, that was wonderful. I was swooning over them, and wondering where the fuck was my Li Ming. Was it good “representation”? No. (Let's face it, nor is Hidamari.) Was it “realistic”? No. (Again, nor is Hidamari.) But was it full of joy? Yes! Was it full of chemistry and sensuality and longing? Yes. Did it show that deaf people can be fun and joyous too and want rampant sex and can make fun of ourselves? Yes, yes, yes. It didn’t even have a proper kiss, and yet managed to be so full of physicality. Which emotionally starved fuck-up wrote this script?

ME: I’d rather not go into it.

SHE: Was the person who wrote the manga hard-of-hearing?

ME: I don’t know. I didn't think it mattered.

SHE: Good. Better that way. Because if I found out that they were, I might be tempted to cut them some slack, and I don't want to. I want to preserve my unrighteous indignation.

ME: When did you first become suspicious that the show was going to be a damp squib?

SHE: Shall we say it together?

BOTH: The kiss!

ME: Yes!

SHE: What a cop off!

ME: People tried to justify it, you know. Everywhere. The pearl-clutchers came up with all sorts of explanations. I just couldn’t accept it. At all. This is 20-fucking-24! It smelt too much of cowardice to me. If not institutional homophobia.

SHE: Thank god I can still smell.

ME: Indeed, and my tastebuds are thankful for it. But yes, it was a symbol, a symbol of oncoming failure of imagination, a lack of daring. I knew at that point that they were going to take the easy way out. I mean, the show had so many good things at the beginning. The set-up, the acting, the natural fluidity of presence between Kohei and Taichi. What happened?

SHE: Multitasking never works. Trust me. Not even for women. The show was vacillating from theme to theme, character to character, without knowing what it wanted to say, or show. In other words, the definition of a bad script, which no acting, however good, can redeem. It had no focus.

ME: And the focus should have been on love.

SHE: Yes. Why else are we here?

ME: You mean on earth, or in the BL world?

SHE: What’s the difference?

ME: I’m going to block you now.

SHE: Don’t. Then I have to talk to my husband. I'm just saying that if they wanted to marry the idea of love and hardness-of-hearing, they shouldn't have resorted to such cheap tricks as introducing Maya, or just make misunderstanding the whole machinery of the show. I could practically hear the plot creaking. Ironically...

ME: No wonder you bought me lube for my last birthday. When did you throw in the towel then?

SHE: An episode or two after Maya came in. You?

ME: The episode where Maya came in.

SHE: You quit sooner? That almost never happens!

ME: Yes, but I have been keeping up with discussions on MDL — you know I’m a masochist — and Reddit, and it has been going exactly where I thought it would go. I knew the romance would disappear, I knew that there would be no further intimacy, I knew that Maya would occupy too much time… it all came true. I have developed a sixth sense for turgid BLs.

SHE: And you call me harsh.

ME: I'll do one better and call the ending now. There will be a time-jump, there will be another almost near-miss, there will be an “I’ve loved you all along” realisation, and then the worst bad-angle, fish-eyed kiss imaginable. You know, with the kind of chemistry that causes asphyxiation? Or death by proptosis? That is, of course, if there is a kiss at all. Maybe they'll end it with a low-five.

SHE: What is a low-five?

ME: Where they just hug, or briefly hold hands, and as soon as their hands move downwards, they go: Ewww... gay.

SHE: I've taught you well. And I bet they’ll try to redeem Maya too.

ME: Like Tong in whatchamacallit.

SHE: My Stand-in?

ME: Sorry, I’m too busy.

SHE: What are you watching now?

ME: Happy of the End. Terrible title, but it is sooo good! I'm hoping it will redeem JBL for me this year. You?

SHE: 4Minutes, mainly to see Fuaiz being a power-bottom. I'm hoping that, in the finale, he'll be railed to death by Win and Korn, and maybe have a Great Tyme too.

ME: I’m still waiting for a Thai power couple named Gang & Bang.

SHE: One can only hope. On which note…

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A Nothing Burger of a Show

I watched “Silhouette of Your Voice,” the movie adaptation of the same manga, a day before the first episode of this series aired. I found the movie a bit boring as the plot felt like a whole lot of nothing, but I chalked this up to the limitations of its runtime and that a series fleshing out the plot would greatly improve on an honestly interesting story. I don’t want to say I was sorely mistaken as I think the potential is still there, but this series definitely failed to do much else with the plot compared to the film.

There’s really no excuse for this series to be as long as it is with so little going on. After watching all 12 episodes, I can’t even really tell you anything new I learned about the characters that I didn’t already know after the first two. These characters feel extremely two-dimensional which is disappointing as they have so much potential. All I know about Kouhei is he can’t hear and he feels sad because he’s different. All I know about Taichi is he loves to eat and… well, that’s about it.

Even though Taichi serves as the main character of this series, I cannot, for the life of me, understand why (outside of the idea that he is the stand-in for the hearing able-bodied audience.) He’s extremely boring as a character and the choices he makes and the actions he takes make little sense to me. Maybe it’s his actor’s fault, but Taichi always just has this completely expressionless, borderline bored look on his face whenever anything is happening. The entire series I could not tell if he was developing feelings for Kouhei because, every time Taichi looks at him, he looks bored out of his mind! It’s really a shame because I found Kouhei’s actor pretty decent especially when it comes to emotional scenes.

Even worse, all of the side characters felt pointless to the story, doing the exact opposite of progressing the plot. The only side character of any actual significance is Maya, whose purpose I didn’t really understand. She kind of just seemed like Stock Female Character In BL That Drives A Wedge Between The Two Leads And Gets Audiences Angry #372827. I think most people agree her backstory added nothing to the plot (if there even is one at this point.)

Also, I am totally fine with a lack of physical affection in romance dramas if there is enough drama and plot to make up for it. For example, there wasn’t even a kiss in “Cherry Magic” but there was enough of an interesting plot and intriguing drama that most audiences don’t care. In “I Hear The Sunspot,” I feel like they had an even bigger chance than “Cherry Magic” to have a really interesting and compelling plot to make up for the lack of a *proper* kiss and yet they completely fumbled the ball. Somehow this is a romance drama that failed at both romance and drama.

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Whispers of the Heart: A Journey of Unspoken Love

It began with the aroma of a meal, one finding satisfaction in eating, the other in watching. Their bond, a delicate thread of fate, grew stronger as they carefully explored their own and each other’s hearts. Even as one’s hearing faded, the other remained a constant source of light.

Taichi, usually so carefree, diligently took notes for Kohei, capturing essential knowledge.

Kohei, mindful of Taichi’s comfort, quietly restrained his passion.

We, silent witnesses to their love, are deeply moved by their journey and await Taichi’s awakening.

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Beautiful story

I watched the movie a year or so ago and wished it had gone a little bit further. I felt it stopped right in the middle of a perfectly good story. I was so excited to find out they were making it into a drama and adding more story to it.

I personally love this story because it hit really close to home. I am friends with multiple deaf/hard of hearing people and have seen them experience similar issues. I thoroughly enjoy seeing Taichi stand up for Kohei the way he does. The character development is really strong and frankly realistic. The show does a really good job at progressing the story without making unrealistic character changes (ex. randomly changing their values to change the plot).

The acting through the entire show was wonderful. The story itself was beautiful. I am definitely gonna rewatch this with one of my HoH friends. <3

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totally worth watching

I Hear The Sunspot 2024 was an amazing drama. I really enjoyed watching it. The feelings were so genuine; I could truly feel them. It made me wonder how life can possibly be from someone else’s perspective. I love that it showed us that people don’t want to be treated differently or pitied but instead want to be counted as normal members of society.

The drama didn’t only carry beautiful messages and make us concerned; it also helped us understand what love truly is. I could feel the love. I wish everyone finds someone they want to change this world to a better place for. I hope someone comes into everyone’s life who can show them the way they want to take steps, grow, and glow.

Talented cast, beautiful story. All I can say is that I adored it.

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JUST LIKE READING THE MANGA

No words to explain how much I loved watching this. It's just like reading the manga. I'm so so so glad they decided to make this live action. I've always known about Kohei and Taichi, but really got to know them thanks to this one. I also started reading the manga and it amazed me how similar they're. Thanks thanks thanks. This is so worth it. I wish we could keep seeing more, a second season would be amazing if they keep doing it like this one. Little changes from the manga but still the same. I loved it with my whole heart and fell instantly in love with each character. Would love to see more of Yasu, Yoko, Maya, Chiba and Sai.

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A thing of pure beauty

This show is just so so wonderful! The story of a friendship, and blossoming romance, between a shy, insular boy who's going deaf and a dorky, exuberant, excitable puppy of a boy who becomes his note-taker in class.
The leads are amazing actors who have a really beautiful and pure chemistry. There are some real laugh out loud moments from Taichi, a guy who cannot fail to make you smile with his boundless energy, but he'll also make you cry with his sincerity and purity of heart. It's no surprise that Kouhei falls for him as Taichi treats him with a respect and honest friendship that he's never known before.
Be warned that when she arrives, you will hate Maya - the new girl with hearing loss who is Kouhei's junior - with the burning intensity of a thousand, white-hot suns!
The only reason this didn't get a solid 10 from me was that I really would have liked to have seen one tiny, beautiful kiss between them, instead of the one fakey, shot from behind their head so you see nothing kiss. But to be honest, even if this had been a bromance rather than a BL, I still would have loved it! It's charming and sweet and funny and touching and beautiful and I'll definitely be watching it again!

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mudaram vidas

eu me lembro que depois de ver o primeiro episódio de hidamari eu senti que minha vida tinha sido transformada, fiquei completamente obcecado conforme os episódios iam saindo semanalmente. Eu ja comentei (acho) em alguma review anterior que a maneira mais fácil de me convencer a assistir algo é falar que tem gays ou surdos no meio e aqui tem os dois!!!

Queria falar primeiro sobre como foi extremamente divertido acompanhar o taichi e o kohei. acho que o taichi se tornou um dos meus personagens favoritos do mundo Bl, o modo como ele é expressivo, uma pessoa que se importa e cuida dos outros (me apaixonei por ele no primeiro ep). Assim como acompanhar o kohei é uma montanha russa de sentimentos.

Sobre a história é muito linda e divertida, mesmo. Eu acho que ela foi bem construída e as tramas foram bem introduzidas ao longo da série. Eu acho que o ponto alto é como tratar de um assunto tão denso e sentimental de uma forma relativamente leve e descontraída.

Sou deficiente auditivo e foi impossível não se identificar com muitos aspectos que eram retratados na série, especialmente os que envolviam o kohei ou a maya. Apesar de achar que eles fizeram um ótimo trabalho eu percebi uma coisa nos episódios finais (que também está presente em outras obras com personagens surdos) é como existe sempre um grande sofrimento envolvendo esses personagens e pra aliviar esse sentimento vem uma pessoa não surda. Não é uma vida fácil, mas não é um sofrimento diário.

Só para finalizar, queria muito que esse ultimo episódio não fosse o último. Apesar deles terem fechado a história de uma boa forma fiquei com sensação de que ficou faltando algo.

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