The opening scenes of Beyond Goodbye (aka, Sayonara no Tsuzuki) tell you exactly what you should expect from this series. The answer? Cliché and sentimentality. As Saeko (Kasumi Arimura) and Yusuke (Tôma Ikuta) take a bus to go "beyond the mountains" and enjoy fireworks from their seat, the tone becomes so sweet, so sugary that I wasn't surprised that their moment was suddenly destroyed by a tragedy. Beyond Goodbye follows that cheap rule of storytelling that dictates an overly sentimental scene should be immediately followed by a calamity. The filmmakers think this emotional trick will quickly put us on the characters' side. This is the kind of shortcut one takes when one lacks real dramatic powers and creativity. Only a shallow, unimaginative, empty-headed fool plays with people's emotions to gain sympathy. An intelligent person impresses people with his talent and his gift. If a filmmaker is smart, he will prioritize both style and substance equally. Otherwise, he will just pull at your heartstrings.
In Beyond Goodbye, writer Yoshikazu Okada and director Hiroshi Kurosaki keep pulling at your heartstrings until the strings break and your heart starts bleeding. After the aforementioned tragedy, Yusuke dies, and his heart is transplanted inside another man's body. He is Kazu (Kentarô Sakaguchi), and he is married to Miki (Yuri Nakamura). This marriage doesn't stop him from finding Saeko attractive. Something about her feels familiar to him. We, of course, know what the deal is. Along with the heart, Yusuke's memories have also come inside Kazu's body. This means he starts enjoying coffee and is able to play I Want You Back on the piano effortlessly. When Saeko meets Kazu for the first time, he expresses his love for coffee romantically, and Saeko realizes that he sounds exactly like his dead fiancé, but she tries to brush the notion aside. It won't be a spoiler to say that Saeko and Kazu are unable to suppress their feelings for each other for a long time and eventually discover the reason behind the romance, the attraction.
There is sufficient room for complexity and drama in this narrative. Beyond Goodbye even makes its complexity explicit by making characters wonder if Kazu's feelings for Saeko are his own or arising simply due to Yasuke's memories. Is Saeko falling in love with Kazu or Yasuke, who exists in his body? And what about Miki? She is losing her husband in all this. Instead of confronting these questions, Beyond Goodbye settles for schmaltzy twists. It takes the easy way out by using death to wrap up its story. Even the final car scene rings false because you don't believe those two characters would strike up a friendship. The series merely wants to trigger responses like "Aww" and "Ah, so sweet." Okada creates a hermetically sealed world, and Kurosaki fills it with cute shots and soppy smiles. You get scenes where people at an airport start dancing, and a boy gives a girl a piggyback ride.
Yasuke is remembered as a person who was the life of the party - a funny, energetic, quirky human being. However, when we see this character in person, he behaves like someone who has been told to act like a funny, energetic, quirky human being. His mannerisms seem to be borrowed from movies. Yasuke doesn't look as special as the characters describe him. We initially sense some professional rivalry between Saeko and Midori (Ayumi Ito) when the latter labels the former "competent" and thinks of burdening her with extra duties. But your intuitions turn out to be wrong, making you wonder if you were wrong about Saeko and Midori or if the series forgot about the rivalry. Anyway, Beyond Goodbye considers the characters' profession as either plot convenience (it brings Saeko and Kazu together professionally) or window dressing (there is no conversation around profit and loss or about how Saeko's company is putting itself ahead of other coffee companies). The characters have so much money and so much luxury that they can book flight tickets and go to Hawaii anytime.
Beyond Goodbye's substance is thin, and the eight episodes make it evident how much the series strains itself to fill up its runtime. The characters' lives aren't terribly exciting or appealing, so the gorgeous landscapes are a relief. The sky is very blue, and the grass is very green. There is also a very cool "Open/Closed" sign. Beyond Goodbye looks like something made to boost tourism in Otaru and Hawaii. If you want to watch the show, watch it for the pretty sights. Ignore the romance and the drama. The scenery is more alluring.
Final Score- [3.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times