If you can get through Takahiro Miki’s Drawing Closer without crying, you ought to be awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor. This Japanese rendition of “Yomei Ichinen to Senkoku Sareta Boku ga, Yomei Hantoshi no Kimi to Deatta Hanashi” by Aoi Morita tugs at your emotions from beginning to end, much like Eddie Van Halen doing “Spanish Fly” for two hours nonstop.
It belongs in the same category of novels for young adults about illnesses, whether chronic or not, such as Five Feet Apart and The Fault in Our Stars. The movie just has one mode, and it never plays nice about wanting to extract your tears from your airways as much as possible. Gather tissues and let’er rip if you’re in the mood for a Shakespearean J-drama about death.
What Is ‘Drawing Closer’ About?
In Drawing Closer, love is discovered in an otherwise bleak location. Akito Hayasaka (Ren Nagase), an artist, is seventeen years old and hopes to be admitted into the Nika Exhibition. However, he is diagnosed with a rare and deadly heart tumor and has just a year to live.
He meets Haruna Sakurai (Natsuki Deguchi) at around the same time on the hospital rooftop, and the two become friends over colored Faber-Castell pencils. With only months remaining on her earthly clock due to a severe ailment, Haruna is also suffering from a fatal condition. Akito and Haruna battle to spend as many of their remaining days together as possible as their adolescent romance grows since they know that death is never far away.
It’s true that Drawing Closer is a powerful emotional drama that hits hard and makes us feel like we’re doing emotional weightlifting. Two borderline children are told they will never grow up due to uncommon medical disorders, and the premise alone is enough to throw some individuals into a tailspin.
They then become enamored! Whether you think the movie is exploitative or genuine, if you have a soul, you will be drawn into Miki’s textbook sobfest. With Wonka-level headrushes of sympathetic situations, Akito and Haruna act all sugarcoatedly sweet, emboldened by their diagnoses.
Though not overly intricate, the movie finds endearing means for Akito and Haruna to express feelings that are first concealed. Akito learns all the hidden meanings of gerbera flowers from his local florist, including what colors indicate and how the count of a bouquet translates. It becomes into a hidden code, and we wonder if Haruna comprehends, given that she’s working on images that Akito isn’t permitted to see. The themes of the story undermine the desire of either dying person to burden the other.
Even if it’s only for a small portion of a person’s life, Akito and Haruna both deserve love, and their ardent marriage gives hope that anyone can meet that special someone. Miki’s narrative vocabulary resounds with affirmation and compassion. Although he encourages his players to exaggerate their excitement, Nagase and Deguchi discover genuine admiration through their grin-filled, passionate performances.
“Drawing Closer” Is Specifically Corny and Hokey
All the scenes are definitely typical of bubbly J-dramas. Throughout, attitudes are startlingly squee-teen and cheerful, and cinematographer Hiroo Yanagida floods outdoor scenes with a white-out brightness that makes it seem as though we are straining into the sun. Upbeat acoustic guitar tunes are laid down by composer Seiji Kameda, who performs an off-screen private show for Akito and Haruna.
With a purposeful hokeyness and corniness, it tends toward an almost heroic quest of happiness—that is, the desire to feel bigger than life. For the same reason that fans of Nicholas Sparks adaptations regularly subject themselves to agony, you’re watching Drawing Closer. Miki offers that agreeably masochistic respite that we all crave—perhaps a reassurance that our souls haven’t been completely crushed by [gestures about].
Drawing Closer is a painful marathon that lasts for two nonstop hours while an unfair tragedy stabs you in the heart. Overwhelming avalanches of existential despair never really go away. Drawing Closer clocks in at almost two hours, which is in line with Netflix’s algorithmic standards for original content at the expense of watchability.
Miki is not good at subtlety, and his adaptation does not have a complex plot that zigzags and weaves for the duration of the viewing to hold our interest. From the start, Drawing Closer’s direction is clear, and Miki isn’t afraid to indulge every cliché found in the “Depressingly Hopeful Rom-Dram-Com” playbook.
Since beauty is subjective, this is undoubtedly a winner if you can keep yours clean long enough to watch Drawing Closer and enjoy torturing yourself with amorous “downers” as a treat. Miki is successful in adhering to rules in order to appease its sentimental target audience. The doctor ordered it, so the themes land with an outrageous heavy-handedness, and Miki’s objectives behind the camera are clear.
Taking care of business (making tweens and homemakers cry red-eyed) and falling somewhere in the middle, Drawing Closer is neither better or worse than showcase Hallmark or Lifetime specials.(Source)
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