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Each week, Netflix drops a list of the top 10 films and TV shows dominating the platform. While No One Saw Us Leave is buzzy this week, one of the most popular shows globally is the Japanese romantic drama Romantics Anonymous. If you're looking for an antidote to the harsh realities of the world, this is it.
Romantics Anonymous is based on a 2010 French film written by Jean-Pierre Améris. It's been adapted into an eight-episode series about two people with social anxieties, who, when they're together, can block out the issues that otherwise consume them.
In the series, Han Hyo-joo plays Lee Hana, a brilliant chef who becomes known as the Anonymous Chocolatier. She creates her amazing confections at home and slyly delivers them to a famous candy shop called Le Sauveur without letting anyone see her. Hana is unable to make eye contact with others, a side effect of the grief she's experiencing after losing her mother. The only person in her life who knows this about her is Kenji, the owner of Le Sauveur, who's also Hana's mentor.
After Kenji's death, Fujiwara Sosuke (Shun Oguri) takes over Le Sauveur. Sosuke is the heir to a massive candy company, and while he respects the work that Le Sauveur does, he's also a businessman. And his first order of business is to fire this Anonymous Chocolatier.
Sosuke also has some deep trauma stemming from a death he believes he caused as a child, and therefore refuses to make physical contact with anyone. It affects his daily life, causing a lack of close, personal connections. When Hana meets Sosuke for the first time, she is clumsily thrust, literally, into his arms and the two experience a moment of fate, or luck, if you will. They realize that, in each other's presence, all their existing social phobias melt away. They're immune to one another.
The moment is a bit of magical realism, but that initial spark they feel when they touch and make eye contact -- the two things that freak them out the most -- is also what every great romance is built on. A connection between two people who feel changed, revitalized when they're together.
The show never shies away from their all-consuming fears or trivializes them. Hana and Sosuke are abundantly aware of the work they need to do to overcome their afflictions. They often struggle with the idea that they're holding themselves back from living normal lives. However, the mutual connection they feel allows them to tune that all out.
The show invites a few obstacles along the way toward happiness. Hana has a crush on a cool bartender, Hiro, whom she has only ever admired from a distance (and as it turns out, he and Sosuke are best friends). Plus, as co-workers, things become complicated because, early on, Hana doesn't reveal that she's the Anonymous Chocolatier.
Even though the two main characters have their trepidations, the show itself is a beacon of gentle calm as they realize what life could be like if they could quiet their minds. It also helps that there are many tantalizing, but also meditative, scenes of Hana making her chocolate creations, manipulating the melted chocolate, molding it and packaging up these perfect little jewels for delivery.
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As with most non-English shows, this one is better watched in Japanese with subtitles. I say this having only watched the English-language trailer, which almost presents the show as a goofy rom-com. The series is a comedy in the same sense that The Bear is a comedy: Humor exists, but it's not the point.
The show takes its time building the relationship between Hana and Sosuke, while also creating a whole world around them as they enter each other's professional and personal lives. Even with that deliberate pacing, it's an easy and satisfying weekend binge.
