An emotionally stagnant salaryman tangles with an exponentially distressed damsel in Harmonium director Kôji Fukada's skewed take on the rom-com. His 10-part adaptation of Mochiru Hoshisato's manga The Mark of Truth unfolds like chapters in a book as each episode ends on a cliffhanger (a shorter version also made the theatrical rounds).
As it begins, 30-year-old Tsuji (the boyishly handsome Win Morisaki), manager at a toy and fireworks manufacturer, is already juggling two women. Company policy forbids workplace relationships, so he and the no-nonsense Miss Hosokawa (Kei Ishibashi) meet in secret, but he also humors excitable 24-year-old Minako (Akari Fukunaga) with the occasional stolen kiss. He's just a boy who can’t say no, but he can't commit either.
One night at a convenience store, he notices the waifish Ukiyo (Kaho Tsuchimura) struggling with a map and offers to help her find her way around. It's late and he's a stranger, so she declines, but when her rental car gets stuck in the path of an oncoming train, he pushes with all of his might to save her from certain death. From then on, their fates become entwined.
With each episode, Tsuji learns something new, like the fact that Ukiyo is flat broke, so he loans her money to pay her rental car bill. That might be the end of that, except she keeps calling for help, and he keeps providing it—even after he finds out she has a daughter, a hotheaded not-quite ex-husband, and a 1.2 million yen (almost $11,000) debt to a yakuza. He takes her out to dinner, loans her bedding, and even lets her crash at his storage container-like apartment after she gets evicted.
Patient and understanding at first, Miss Hosokawa's tolerance soon reaches the breaking point. Some of Ukiyo's lies make sense since she's just trying to protect herself, others suggest that male-generated trauma has left her emotionally unstable. She's neither femme fatale nor gold digger, but she can't hold down a job, drinks too much, and nods off at inopportune moments. The situation grows even more complicated when Daisuke (Shûgo Oshinari), a troubling figure from her past, makes a reappearance.
If the storytelling is consistently compelling, it's also a little exasperating, since the undependable Ukiyo often seems like more trouble than she's worth, despite a few stray moments of magic and wonder. Every time it seems as if she might be getting her act together, disaster follows. It would be easy to lose faith in the two of them if they didn’t finally find the wherewithal to make some changes in their lives.
In the concluding chapter, which plays like an epilogue, Fukada reconnects with them three years later, by which point everything has changed. The title suggests that they found "the real thing" with each other that they couldn't find with other partners, but it's hard not to wonder if it isn't more ironic than not. At the very least, the actors make their irresistible attraction to each other unsettlingly believable. Recommended.