Surprise, everyone!

We have a guest review today, by none other than our very own j3ffc! 🥳

Basically, what happened was, j3ffc wrote some very insightful remarks in one of our chat corners over on Patreon, specifically the October Deep Dive, and I loved what he had to say.

Not only is dear j3ffc an actual fan of J-rock, he even has experience interacting with geniuses in real life, and I could think of no one else who would be able to give us as informed an opinion on Glass Heart, as he. 🤩

Long story short, j3ffc’s very kindly beefed up his original comments, and here is his review! 🥳

Thanks so much, j3ffc, for sharing your thoughts and insights with us! 🥲

KFG ❤️

PS: If you’d like to sample more of j3ffc’s own brand of brilliance, please do make time to check out Dark (here!), the dream drama that he wrote last year, which was a legit labor of love (he even made a soundtrack for it!! 🤯).

Stuff I Liked and Stuff I Didn’t/Drama Rating

I knew what we were in for within the first 5 minutes of the show.

A punky-looking band, self-describing their sound as “aggressive”, dismissed its drummer, played by Yuuki Luna as Akane, our FL. She asked why, and they responded, “’cause we don’t like your sound. Your sound is too heavy.”

Now, no “aggressive” outfit worth their salt would ever complain about a drummer that was too heavy.

Except for the unlikely reason that this was a deliberate a signal that this first group of posers wasn’t worth their salt, it was already clear that this show would have only an intermittent relationship with logic.

But this led immediately into a thrilling sequence with drumming and manic keyboard playing in the rain. Indeed, seeing this in a preview drew me to the show in the first place.

Taken together, these scenes set up the rhythm for the entirety of the show: gorgeously shot music pieces, some emotionally affecting storylines, and quite a bit of unbelievable nonsense.

To be fair, this combination of cool and unbelievable is not uncommon in a lot of television produced anywhere, really.

My technique to enjoying shows like this is to take in the set pieces as they come and squint a bit when trying to tie it all together.

In this case, this meant things like ignoring how they could come up with an impromptu concert on a boat, or how a sophisticated railed circular camera crew could be assembled within minutes for an off-the-cuff streaming event, or….well, you get the point. There could have been a whole lotta head scratching going on.

But using my rose-colored not-worry-about-the-reality lens, I ended up enjoying the show for any number of reasons, in no particular order:

• A spunky relatable heroine, chasing her dream. I appreciated that she was nicely portrayed by real-looking person and not a model type.

• The LG (lead genius) role played with panache by the talented and charismatic Takeru Satoh (he was wonderful in First Love).

• The rest of the musicians in the show was well cast, especially Keita Machida as the groups world-weary guitarist (he’s, like, all of 35 years old in real life). The most meaningful drama in the show arose through between the musicians in the various groups and they felt more real than not. The band members had interesting back stories: to quote from The New Yorker: “Musicians lead complicated lives.”

• The love letter to music itself that permeated the show, not only through the leads but through other members of the cast. There was a nice depiction of how the non-musician professionals were drawn to this world, and I would have like it had they been used more of in the story (a couple of key characters went MIA for a few episodes only to appear out-of-nowhere in the finale).

• The character of Toya (a competing rocker) was particularly well-written and -acted, and I quite liked the nice reveal about him made half-way through the show.

• Putting some of the less realistic aspects of the performance stuff aside, the depictions of the music making were quite solid and appealed to my inner music geek. I want their studio.

• There was a good undercurrent of the power of music and forgiveness and commitment, although a lot of that became hard to follow, to the degree I am challenged to come up with a single theme of the show. Taking suggestions here. 👉

• The settings looked great with just the right amount of seedy for the story.

I was less willing to forgive a lot of the mixed messages about the male lead’s mysterious health issues (MHIs).

He has to make music to live? But he can’t make music b/c of the MHIs? My head hurts trying to think about it, but it overall seemed like a pretty cheap way of ramping up the drama-drama.

And is it really necessary for multiple people to always fall for the FL? I didn’t see this really as a romantic melo, so for me, the answer would have been a firm “no”.

Overall, the episodes were short and entertaining, and whizzed by (perfect for my li’l brain coupled with sketchy sleep habits).

The Music

Unlike a lot of folks who’ve posted about this show on KFG’s Patreon, rock IS my favorite genre of music. I listen to a lot of hard J-rock and have a pretty well-developed pop sensibility.

A welcome trend now is the presence of highly talented hard rock/metal bands led by women, like Band-Maid, Nemophila, Gacharic Spin, and Koiai (all recommended). So, I was hoping for a solid OST.

In the end, I thought most of the music was just about OK.

I have since listened to the OST a handful of times, as it often takes me a while to really latch on to new music, and all of the songs are pretty listenable, with a few playlist worthy.

I particularly liked “Crystalline Echo”, “Play Out Loud”, “A Song for Us to Sing”, and “Lucky Me”.

That being said, I appreciate the challenge of coming up with suitable original music for a music-oriented piece of drama, made especially hard when it’s supposed to be the work of a music genius (more on that in a bit), and I think the show’s songwriters did an honorable job of this.

There’s a lot of buzz about how the actors did their own playing and that’s impressive.

It seems likely that there may have been some studio additions (it’s hard for me to tell even from the live performances, given the possible use of backing tracks or hidden musicians), but even if so, you gotta give it up to the cast for having actual musical abilities and certainly a great deal of charisma.

It takes guts to get up and perform in front of other humans. The various live videos are fun, including a collab featuring Takeru Satoh with J-rock royalty One OK Rock.

I did get a kick out of the fact that whenever the writer wanted us to be impressed by the musicians’ abilities, they always had them play frenetic modern jazz that had nothing to do with the bands’ actual style.

On the Depiction of Genius

A key plot point but no spoiler, the story centers around a genius musician who is driven to create greatness, and whose world intersects with that of more ordinarily talented drummer who’s just “gotta be part of that pop music thing” (apologies to Marshall Crenshaw).

We know he’s a genius because the show tells us. Again and again. I mean, like every five minutes someone literally uses the word “genius” to describe our ML.

A fun guessing game is to think of which genius the writer might have used for inspiration (the show is based on a novel by Mio Wakagi).

I have decided upon Sting as the model, who is the real deal and is purportedly hard to work with, if not necessarily a goofball. Actually, Sting strikes me as kind of an anti-goofball.

It helps that the main instrument of both the GL and Sting is the bass (but both – remember that they’re geniuses — can play anything).

The show leans extremely heavily into the tortured artist depiction of our (anti)hero, rendering him as subject to compulsion and a ton of unconventional behavior. There would be practically no story here without this aspect.

I hate this trope. Moreover, I think a better drama could well be written by toning down these aspects of a purportedly brilliant character. But that’s not this show.

One of the reasons I dislike this sort of thing arises from my personal interactions with people who are geniuses in real life.

I want to emphasize that this is a very small number and that I do not use the word lightly, i.e., to just mean “people who are really smart and good at something”.

In my field, at least, I feel qualified to judge who is an actual genius, which requires a high level of creativity and the ability to think about things in a truly original way.

If you met most of these people, you wouldn’t think that they are all that different from anyone else. In fact, far from having wildly off mannerisms, most seem pretty well adjusted and lead reasonably happy lives.

The one thing that they do have in common is a tendency to be very committed to what they do, which comes off more as being a workaholic rather than being a manic crazy person who is incapable of interacting with other, non-genius types, in healthy ways.

This led to one aspect of the story that I did appreciate.

The show explored a number of ways that geniuses connect with ordinary humans, and the mixture of awe/wonder/sense of personal inadequacy with which the ordinary humans regard geniuses.

(I know a lot about the latter, and have written about this elsewhere, re “Do You Like Brahms”.)

Those interactions can be laced with surprise.

In this case, our LG not only was able to appreciate the abilities of his less-gifted colleagues but was also very aware of how his own artistic superiority affected those around him. Really, really nicely done in this patchwork quilt of a show.

THE FINAL VERDICT

Overall, an enjoyable watch if you squint just the right way. Liking rock isn’t a must but it sure does help. 🤘

FINAL GRADE: B+

~j3ffc

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