The story of Innocent Love is centered on a 19 year-old girl, Akiyama Kanon, who is trying her best to live each day happily, but her past keeps casting a shadow over her opportunities. Her older brother is accused of arson and murdering their parents, and thus is in jail. Because of their background, no one wants to hire Kanon and so she leaves her hometown for the big city, Yokohama. In the new city, she tries to make a fresh start and ends up meeting the kind pianist, Nagasaki Junya, whom becomes her first love.
Innocent Love has a very "Last Friends" feel to it as the screenwriter is exactly the same as the one who worked on that particular drama, and Utada Hikaru sings the opening for both dramas. The concept for the opening theme is exactly the same to Last Friend's in which each character has a word attached to their section of the opening sequence. In Innocent Love, the following words are used (for our guessing and speculating pleasure):
Akiyama Kanon (Horikita Maki) - Destiny
Nagasaki Junya (Kitagawa Yujin) - Memory
Toono Kiyoka (Uchida Yuki) - Betrayal
Segawa Subaru (Narimiya Hiroki) - Denial
Akiyama Yoji (Fukushi Seiji) - Sacrifice
Ikeda Jiro (Toyohara Kosuke) - Disclosure
Sakurai Mizuki (Kashii Yu) - Jealousy
From the words in the opening sequence, the audience can guess what each character's personality and story is like. As the central theme to the drama is "Love," my speculations for each character are as follows:
For Akiyama Kanon, her form of love is found through destiny. She meets Nagasaki Junya for the first time in his mansion as a housekeeper and is caught by him when she tries to steal a photograph that shows him smiling at a piano. He makes her take a picture of the two of them together and she feels very happy with their encounter. After she is fired from her recent job due to her getting her background exposed and a coworker framing her for burgulary, she meets Junya again at the church where he plays piano for the choir and realizes that she has fallen in love for the first time. With all these encounters and paths crossing, her love is like something created from destiny.
For Nagasaki Junya, a pianist, time is frozen for him as he is still in love with his (possibly former girl-) friend, Toono Kiyoka, whom is bedridden and relying on machines to keep her alive. She does not smile and is living behind a locked door in Junya's home. Little is known about their past relationship for now, but we know that Junya is very much in love with Kiyoka.
Toono Kiyoka, the woman whom Junya is keeping alive in his mansion, has the word "betrayal" associated with her section of the opening sequence so I can only guess several possibilities to her character. One is that she fell in love with another man and was betrayed so she attempted suicide and failed. Due to her attempt, she is now bedridden. Another theory is that she has a terminal illness and wants to die, but Junya forces her to live by keeping her alive. In any case, the word "betrayal" could mean a great number of things so I'm interested in seeing what her story is.
Segawa Subaru's story is pretty easy to see -- as his word is "denial" which kind of makes it pretty clear as to what type of love he is associated with. Subaru is friends with Junya and though it has not exactly been said yet, it kind of hints at him being in love with Junya. I do not necessarily think that he's gay -- he could very well be bisexual for all we know right now -- but one thing that is for certain is that he is probably in love with his good friend, Junya, and because of this, he feels pain from this emotion. (In my opinion, if Subaru is given a great deal of screen time, this can ultimately turn into one of the best roles Narimiya Hiroki has ever played)
Next is Akiyama Yoji, and with his word being "sacrifice," it makes me wonder what type of "love" he is associated with. My imagination tends to be pretty wild so my theory is that he may not be Kanon's real, blood brother and thus is in love with her. In order to distance himself from her, he might have willingly allowed himself to be arrested and taken to prison even for a crime he may not have committed. Of course, this is just my theory and like I said, I have a wild imagination so it may not be true.
The next word is "disclosure" and I think this only describes Ikeda Jiro's character as a person who is pursuing the truth, not really with the theme of love much. He either wants to prove that Yoji is innocent or find out more about the incident so he knows for certain that Yoji is guilty. He looks kind of shady in a way actually =_=; like a crooked cop...
Lastly is Sakurai Mizuki, Junya's childhood friend, whom is in love with him, but does not have her feelings reciprocated because he does not see her in that way at all. She is jealous of the women who get close to him or even slightly approach him, and tends to have a bitter tone when talking about them. In a way, she may become the antagonist of the drama as jealousy can often kill people ^_^;;;
For now, this story is very nice and definitely my cup of tea. I like tragic stories and I enjoy love stories now and then as long as it's not soppingly sappy and mawkishly romantic. There is a light feel to this drama though it is also pretty dark in a way. I really like it and will definitely keep waching it.
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