Beyond Goodbye Review: A Melodrama on Grief That Misses Its Mark

“This is a story of boy meets girl, but you should know upfront, this is not a love story.“

I couldn’t help but hear the narrator of Marc Webb’s (500) Days of Summer in my head after watching the first three episodes of Netflix’s Beyond Goodbye.

“Ah,” I realised, “this isn’t supposed to be a romance. It’s a life drama.”

I started Beyond Goodbye ready to be devastated by a potentially tragic love story. Netflix did sell the show as a romantic drama for quite some time, you see. But, after a couple of episodes, the show establishes itself as a life drama with a healthy dose of fantasy. And a marvellous one at that. However, halfway through its sixth episode, its intentions get blurry, and the show loses track of its objective.

The question that remains at the end of the series’s eight episodes is: what’s the point that Beyond Goodbye wanted to make?

Directed by Kurosaki Hiroshi and written by Okada Yoshikazu, the creative team behind NHK’s wonderful Hiyokko, Beyond Goodbye tells the story of Saeko (Arimura Kasumi), a young woman living in profound grief after her beloved fiancé Yusuke (Ikuta Toma) passed away in a tragic accident. A few months later, she meets Naruse (Sakaguchi Kentaro), who reminds her of Yusuke. As Naruse also feels strangely attached to Saeko, the two of them try to understand why they feel so uncannily comfortable around each other.

Despite an extraordinary cast, stunning cinematography, and an incredible score (and theme song), Beyond Goodbye struggled to understand what its plot and characters wanted, which led to a frustrating watch.

This review contains spoilers. Read it at your own risk. For a spoiler-free summary, check out our pin at the bottom!

Beyond Goodbye & The Grieving Process

The first five and a half episodes of Beyond Goodbye are a beautiful study of grief. Saeko’s journey explores the different facets of grief and the different needs we have while mourning the loss of a loved one.

Saeko shows us that we mourn not only the loss of their presence but also all the time that we won’t get to spend with them. We mourn the laughter, the fights, the words we won’t ever get to share. Through the characters in Beyond Goodbye, we’re reminded that grief is a very particular kind of heartbreak that everyone processes differently. So, it’s impossible to define a set route that all of us can take to learn how to live with the pain of losing someone.

Seemingly insurmountable, grief may turn into a silent wound that lives within us without ever healing. But, in one way or another, we eventually learn to move forward while carrying that loss with us. We take one step after another, towards an uncertain, mysterious future in which we allow the love we shared to soothe our broken hearts.

That seemed to be the story of Beyond Goodbye.

Both Saeko and Naruse are going through their own grieving process. In hopes of relieving her pain, Saeko mourns the loss of her fiancé by enjoying the company of a man who reminds her of her late beloved. To Saeko, Naruse is somehow keeping Yusuke’s spirit alive. Naruse is mourning the loss of a life he never got to truly live because of an illness that stopped him from doing the things that he deemed “normal”. Alongside Saeko, Naruse appreciates the memories he’s been given while tentatively trying to live a different reality. Their dynamic, a lovely and unique bond of companionship, allows Saeko to honour, appreciate, and learn more about her late fiancé, and Naruse to have a taste of the spontaneity of a life without the constraints of his disease.

The Importance of Support: Beyond Goodbye & The Use of Supporting Characters

Saeko’s mourning benefits from two supporting characters who are also going through their own grieving processes: the great Hiro (Miura Tomokazu), who lost his wife some years before and Yusuke’s childhood friend Kengo (Okuno Eita).

Hiro is at a different stage of his grieving process, and that allows him to advise Saeko, whose mourning is still too recent to impart any wisdom. He shares his own experience with her, understanding that Saeko needs time and support to keep on going beyond her grief. For instance, in episode 3, Hiro gives Saeko a call on her birthday. In a tender, heartwarming conversation, he shares:

And Saeko, I know you said it’s hard to look toward the future, but it’s okay. Unlike cars, humans aren’t designed to walk backwards easily, right? So that means that if you’re walking every single day, you’re moving forward. You’re taking steps forward, okay?

Hiro, then, serves as a reminder that Saeko can and will live on despite her grief.

Meanwhile, Kengo is mourning the same person as Saeko, but his grief takes a completely different shape. He carries a sense of sorrow throughout, crying next to but never alongside Saeko. He refuses to meet Naruse, believing that even if Naruse is now similar to Yusuke, they will never be the same person. The moments between Saeko and Kengo illustrate to the audience, but also the characters themselves, that each of us processes grief in our own way.

Even though Kengo doesn’t really open up to Saeko, they do support each other as they face their pain. The show hints that Kengo was in love with Yusuke from the very beginning, confirming the fact with a two-line dialogue in episode 8. This was a superb subplot that could’ve been better developed. Maybe if the show had decided to fully focus on the theme of grief, they could’ve used Kengo’s storyline to strengthen the message of Beyond Goodbye.

Naruse, On The Other Hand…

Meanwhile, Naruse is left to navigate the waters of this fantastical experience by himself. After receiving a heart transplant, Naruse gains energy and a vivacity he’d never had before. More pressing is the fact that he also finds himself remembering memories that aren’t his. He’s at the door of the life he never got to live: one in which he can run with children, skip work to travel, or simply have an argument with his wife, Miki (Nakamura Yuri). But his excitement to live this new life gets confusing when he has vivid flashbacks of someone else’s existence.

When he tries to share this experience with Miki, he’s harshly shunned. Miki doesn’t want any part in Naruse’s confusion, grief, or curiosity towards his new self, and that isolates him. Naruse doesn’t seem to have any other friends or family members to rely on, and he ends up breaking down (in a marvellously performed scene by Sakaguchi) in front of Kengo. From there on, Saeko seems to be the only one willing to go through this journey of discovery with him. As Yusuke’s feelings and memories seem to become stronger within Naruse, he and Saeko explore Yusuke’s life, learning more about who he was and the life he lived.

Throughout this process, Saeko and Naruse’s relationship was portrayed more as a nuanced friendship than a courtship. And for a show that was focused on exploring grief, that was exactly what Beyond Goodbye needed. For most of the show, Miki seems to be the only one reading too much into everything. Her behaviour towards Naruse’s changes and experiences becomes controlling and obsessive. That contrasts with the sincerity that Saeko offers Naruse and the gentleness of their relationship. A few episodes in, Miki starts to feel like a character out of place, as if she is a misplaced villain without a major purpose.

When Do Things Get Off Track?

The singularity of Saeko and Naruse’s bond, I thought, was defended by the scene in which Miki confronts Saeko at the train station. Miki belittles and offends Saeko’s grief, who maturely responds to her, saying that their relationship wasn’t what Miki imagined it to be.

From there on, however, Beyond Goodbye decides to become a romantic melodrama. With only two episodes remaining, the plot slowly starts to fall apart in a sequence of actions that are difficult to comprehend.

From an awkward kiss to a random bear encounter, the plot tries to go everywhere without really going… well, anywhere. Saeko and Naruse are now, minutes before episode 7 (out of 8), introduced as a romantic couple fated not to be together. Naruse’s anguish becomes even stronger once he finds out that he’s actually dying, but his grieving process is never fully explored. Miki refuses to properly communicate with her husband and, instead, targets her own grief at Saeko — constantly blaming and shaming her. Saeko and Naruse never really get to have a proper affair, but they aren’t just friends anymore either. Naruse’s relationship with Miki is barely touched upon, and he dies at home, in the most anticlimactic scene imaginable.

In the end, Miki and Saeko become sort of “friends,” while Miki continues to posit that Saeko should be “apologetic” towards her. Naruse isn’t even mentioned during the last 10 minutes of the show, as if he had only been a plot device for Saeko’s grief (instead of the male protagonist).

So… what was the point of this whole journey, I wonder?

How Not To Write Female Characters 101

Since we’re talking about female characters: what happened with the female characters in Beyond Goodbye?

We only have two prominent female characters in the series: Saeko and Miki. While Saeko is sincere, determined, and mostly mature, Miki deteriorates from a dedicated, loving wife into a petty, self-centred, and cruel woman. She not only ignores her own husband’s attempts at communication but also chooses to blame a woman she’s never met before for a problem that didn’t even exist.

And here we have a common trope in scripts written by men: women against women for no reason whatsoever. Saeko never intended to break up Naruse’s marriage. Miki never properly talked to her husband. Miki’s hurtful words spat at Saeko are not motivated by any solid succession of events — and in the end, they laugh together as if nothing happened.

Instead, you could’ve had a wife who was open and supportive of her husband’s experiences. She could’ve been involved in the entire process from the very beginning. Miki, Naruse, and Saeko could’ve shared this process of grief and loss together. After Naruse’s passing, Saeko could’ve been to Miki what Hiro has been to her. And then, yes, Saeko could return once a year to see her and their relationship could bring a bit of peace to both of them.

Is it more entertaining to have a spiteful wife? Is it because we needed an “antagonist” of sorts? Not at all.

Performances and Cinematography: Beyond Goodbye’s Saving Grace

Sakaguchi Kentaro’s performance in Beyond Goodbye shines. He portrays hopelessness and optimism with the same intensity in a man with a sense of innocence and inexperience despite his age. He feels lost, hurt, and curious — and Sakaguchi charismatically portrays all of those, encouraging us to root for Naruse.

As usual, Arimura Kasumi delivers a nuanced performance of a young woman struggling to accept, understand, and live with grief. Her Saeko is outspoken, sometimes even brash, and so full of personality that it’s a pleasure to watch. Beyond Goodbye is the fourth project that Sakaguchi Kentaro and Arimura Kasumi worked on together, after 2016’s Love That Makes You Cry, 2017’s Narratage, and 2019’s Soshite, Ikiru. That experience, alongside the script, allows Sakaguchi and Arimura to have a friendly chemistry that doesn’t have much of a romance to it.

Ikuta Toma bursts with life throughout, a man full of joy but still hiding a tinge of sorrow. He and Arimura portray a couple whose relationship still needed a lot of time to fully blossom — and both deliver their love story with the sentimentality required. Beyond Goodbye is blessed with a complete cast that does an excellent job despite the flawed script.

Kurosaki’s Hopeful Cinematography

Choosing to film Beyond Goodbye in mostly wide and medium shots, Kurosaki’s compositions emphasise the connections between characters, their encounters and farewells. He also allows the beauty of the environment and the passing of the seasons to mesmerise us with their colours and shapes. Close-ups are few and far between, used carefully to highlight important expressions and details.

Despite the difficult topic, Kurosaki’s breathtaking cinematography portrays Naruse, Saeko, and Yusuke’s story in warm, vivid colours. He plays with light and shadows to guide our attention and give the show a magical aura. The story never looks sorrowful and, instead, is presented with a cheery appearance.

That cheerfulness is also delivered through the theme song, Azalea by Yonezu Kenshi, whose melody is light-hearted but whose lyrics accompany the theme of grief perfectly. Matsumiya Aska’s score is also hauntingly beautiful and fairly hopeful in tone. You can listen to them all on Spotify.

Should You Watch Beyond Goodbye?

Where did we go wrong, I wonder. Beyond Goodbye was marketed as a heartbreaking romance. What we got instead was a series that spends most of its time being a fantastical life drama before becoming a messy romantic melodrama in its last two episodes. The script fails to tell a cohesive story with a clear theme and well-developed plotlines and characters. Sakaguchi and Arimura, alongside the rest of the cast, deliver extraordinary performances, and the cinematography is gorgeous — but that’s not enough to save the final result.

If you’re an Arimura, Sakaguchi and/or Ikuta fan, you might find enough redeeming qualities about it to justify your time. The show is only 8 episodes long, after all, and they all span 35-50 minutes each. Just don’t go into it expecting a clear-cut romance or a purely philosophical drama.

You can watch Beyond Goodbye on:

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For a bittersweet romance, I’d highly recommend Sakaguchi’s first K-drama, What Comes After Love, which we reviewed a couple of weeks ago. For well-crafted works on grief, give NHK’s Grace no Rireki a shot or Takita Yojiro’s Departures (2008). For a mix of grief and romance, you could also try Fujii Michihito’s The Last 10 Years or (my personal favourite) Tsukikawa Sho’s The 100th Love With You — both with Sakaguchi Kentaro as the male lead.

If you have watched Beyond Goodbye, tell me in the comments if you enjoyed it. If you haven’t, will you give it a shot? I can’t wait to hear from you!