Sounds of Winter: A Raw, Unconventional Romantic Drama

In the last episode of NTV’s Sounds of Winter (yes, last; is this a bit spoiler-y? Perhaps, but I’m not revealing any major details!), the protagonist sits next to her friend on a swing set. She grabs her backpack and pulls a light-blue scarf out of it — a scarf she spent days knitting herself. She offers it to her friend, who refuses it since he’s allergic to wool.

She then decides to unravel it.

The friend asks why she’d ever do that, considering that she went to all the trouble of knitting it. Either she doesn’t know, or she doesn’t care, because she ignores his remark. For the next two minutes, we observe as she carefully unravels the beautiful light-blue scarf in silence. As soon as she’s done, the friend asks if he can keep the huge ball of yarn — even though the wool will definitely give him an allergic reaction.

That scene, as simple as it might be, summarises the entirety of Sounds of Winter, a stunningly poetic character study that dares to explore the most contradictory aspects of human nature through a slow-paced, introspective narrative.

This review is spoiler-free (unless you consider that first paragraph a spoiler, of course!). If you’re in a rush, why don’t you save this review for later? Our pin is at the bottom!

The Calming Rhythm of Sounds of Winter

Sharply written by Imaizumi Rikiya, who also cleverly co-directed the series alongside Yamashita Nobuhiro and Yamada Takuji, Sounds of Winter examines the love life of 27-year-old Tsuchida Ayana (Sugisaki Hana). We first meet Ayana at a noisy laundrette in the middle of a wintry night. Drowning the noise of the washing machines is the music she blasts into her ears, some rock tune by Thee Michelle Gun Elephant that becomes the soundtrack to such a prosaic, fleeting moment.

Ayana is a published novelist with an incredibly intense, curious inner life. She’s always wondering about the meaning of our existence and feelings. She’s particularly obsessed with romantic love, an emotion she simply can’t (or won’t?) understand. She carries a little notepad with her at all times, on which she writes her wandering thoughts and doubts. To the sound of Michelle, she reads and re-reads, writes and re-writes her little notes as she waits for her laundry.

Everything — sound editing to cinematography to performance — is delivered with such elegance, such effectiveness, that diegesis is easily established and accepted. We become part of Ayana’s universe as it is quietly infiltrated by the kind Saiki Yukio (Narita Ryo), a hairdresser who sits across Ayana as he waits for his own laundry. A huge fan of Michelle himself, he can’t help but steal glances in her direction. Soon, they are listening to music together.

This serendipitous encounter brings out Ayana’s free-spirited personality to the surface, and by the time the sun goes up the following morning, Ayana and Yukio are an item.

We then meet the eccentric Hayase Kotaro (Okayama Amane), Ayana’s friend, who has a massive crush on her. He stops by the clothes shop where she is a part-timer to deliver a letter to her. A love letter, it seems, that ends up undelivered when Ayana tells him about her new boyfriend, who she seemingly got overnight.

Finally, we see Ayana meet the mysterious Yamada Sen (Uchibori Taro), a fellow writer with whom she feels completely comfortable. With Yamada, Ayana feels free to talk about her conflicting emotions, her needs, and her experiences. Yamada is almost the personification of her little notepad — with a catch: they are both very much attracted to each other, a yearning they refuse to give in to but continue to foster despite both being in different relationships.

By the end of the first episode of Sounds of Winter, you don’t know exactly how to look at Ayana, someone who earnestly threw herself into a relationship but who can’t (or won’t) be faithful to it. Her excuses are so flimsy that she herself doesn’t really seem to believe in them: I can’t fall in love. I don’t fall in love because I fear the possibility of loss. I don’t even know what romance is, but I must figure it out.

Coming to Terms with Our Contradictions

Sounds of Winter makes you feel awfully uncomfortable, especially during its first few episodes. Before long, however, Ayana blossoms into a fully fledged character in front of us as we’re invited to learn about her previous love affairs and how she has changed over the last decade or so.

This is a story about a young woman who weaves her relationships into an intricate tapestry, but her fears and complexes lead her to consistently unravel it herself. Following this journey is her loyal friend, who always shows up and listens without receiving anything in return but scraps of her attention that might only hurt him.

Sounds of Winter is like that: a series with a strong, incisive undercurrent whose characterisation is established through idiosyncrasies, symbolic events, and seemingly unimportant choices. This is not a show that will please the masses, nor does it ever intend to. It creates its own universe, one in which people speak slowly and philosophically, and no one is ever completely good or evil. It thrives in the complexities and contradictions of human desire and behaviour, through a complicated protagonist whom we come to understand, but we’re never encouraged to mindlessly condone.

Instead, Sounds of Winter provokes us to question, analyse, and empathise with her.

Even though Ayana’s behaviour will surely seem questionable to most of us, she’s looking for an answer to a question we all have: what is love? Her mind is so preoccupied with clearly defining such an elusive emotion that she fails to honestly face and cherish the bonds that she does create. Throughout Sounds of Winter, we navigate Ayana’s memories, her many affairs, friendships, and family dynamics. With every encounter, she desperately searches for answers, engaging in all sorts of conversations that examine how kaleidoscopic human nature truly is and how romance can take many shapes and sizes.

After we see Ayana go home for New Year’s just to find out that her mother has actually gone on a trip without telling her, or after we witness her pour her heart into a relationship that seemed perfect just for her to be dumped overnight and without a proper reason, we realise Ayana has had her heart broken before. Not once, not twice. Probably several times — and not just in a romantic sense.

Every time Ayana believed she understood what love meant, the rug was pulled out from under her.

As Sounds of Winter calmly shows us how Ayana’s relationships — whether romantic, familial, or platonic — have moulded her into the person she is today, she becomes less of a target of criticism and more of an illustration of how messy and confused we all are. Ayana knows that the emptiness she feels when in a relationship actually comes from her, from her own inability to sincerely open up to others and even to herself. She knows she’s selfish and self-centred because she refuses to put herself in a position of vulnerability that might get her heart broken once more.

Even when she finds a spark that could potentially offer her an answer, she’s too afraid to foster it attentively, to face it wholeheartedly, to get out of her mind and embrace reality in all its uncertainty, chaos, and spontaneity.

Another flawless scene that defines Ayana’s character is one from Episode 8: Ayana decides to have beer and ice cream together in the middle of winter. She sits next to Yukio, who observes her curiously as she holds a beer in one hand and an ice cream in the other, taking turns to eat both. She then complains that it’s too cold, but she persists. “It’s cold, but delicious“, she says. That’s who Ayana is: a person who wants all and nothing, always unsure of what she truly desires and what the consequences of those desires might be.

It isn’t so much that Ayana doesn’t know what love is. It’s just that she’s terrified of being hurt in the search for it, and she doesn’t know whether she really wants (or needs) what’s on the other side of that quest. Then, Ayana finds herself constantly tying and untying her own knotty bonds, over and over again.

Finding Beauty Amidst the Chaos

Sounds of Winter notices the extraordinary in the ordinary, establishing its own peaceful rhythm through a balance of silly and philosophical conversations. This is a series that requires tolerance and a perceptive eye, since it isn’t scared to let its characters just be. It appreciates the silence, the introspection, the mundane. It tells its story through small details, quiet gestures, and dialogues full of subtext. It’s also important to mention that voice-over narration is used carefully and effectively throughout, without over-explaining anything — in Sounds of Winter, everything happens in between the lines, after all.

The craftsmanship in Sounds of Winter is simply extraordinary. The colour palette, the compositions, the production design — everything was meticulously devised with a clear goal in mind. Bolstering its slow-paced narrative, the show is composed of a multitude of long takes and static shots, which allow the performances to play out organically and give the photography a bit of a theatrical flair. With so many medium and full shots, characters are invited to move around the compositions, and we’re asked to identify their physical quirks and body language. The editing never calls attention to itself, adding to the overall simplicity that marks Ayana’s routine.

This story requires such nuance from its actors that it’s fascinating to watch them bounce off one another to create such three-dimensional dynamics. Sugisaki Hana, Narita Ryo, and Okayama Amane in particular deliver some of their career-best performances in Sounds of Winter, with a perfect balance of eccentricity, subtlety, and tenderness.

Should You Watch Sounds of Winter?

Thought-provoking and sensitive, Sounds of Winter transforms the messy relationships of its subject into a delicate, beautiful, and complex exploration of our quest for the meaning of love. Ayana’s journey can be both utterly maddening and surprisingly genuine, making us feel both angry at and sorry for her.

This is a show that asks for your patience, attention, and empathy, but if you decide to give them, you’ll surely be rewarded. If you’re up for a raw, intimate, and sometimes painfully awkward character study, Sounds of Winter offers a remarkably artistic dive into the psyche of an unapologetically headstrong young woman who asks us:

Are we too unconsciously unravelling the relationships we knitted ourselves as we fail to sincerely embrace and cherish them?

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