Asako I & II is a 2018 Japanese romantic drama by Ryūsuke Hamaguchi based on a novel by Tomoka Shibasaki.
Asako is a young woman who first is a student in Osaka. One day she starts dating an eccentric man named Baku, who suddenly disappears. Two years later, she has moved to Tokyo without telling most friends from Osaka, and she meets a man named Ryohei, who looks exactly like Baku (and indeed they are played by the same actor). She starts dating him, without him knowing that he looks exactly like her first love. Five years later, as they live together, Asako learns that Baku is now a celebrity and gets an opportunity to find him.
Tropes:
- Betty and Veronica: Baku is the Veronica — handsome, charming, and fascinating, but unreliable, careless, and unapologetic — to Ryohei's placid and boring, but loving and dependable Betty.
- Bittersweet Ending: Asako ultimately chooses to stay with Ryohei instead of the unreliable Baku. However, her actions when attempting to reignite her relationship with Baku result in Ryohei considerably less certain of their relationship and both admit that she might never be able to fully regain his trust. The future of their relationship after that is left ambiguous.
- Burning the Ships: When Asako leaves Ryohei, she has a short phone conversation with a friend they had in common, to whom she says she will never come back; then she throws her phone onto the highway.
- Identical Stranger: Baku and Ryohei are this to each other.
- Insecure Love Interest: When Asako finally admits to Ryohei why she was first attracted to him, he reveals that he knows he looks identical to Baku and that he isn't upset, because he would have done anything to be with her — even if it meant just bearing an identical resemblance to her real love.
- It's All About Me: Asako moves away from Osaka without telling any of her friends, starts dating a guy because he looks like her ex, then dumps him when said ex — for whom she's held a torch for seven years of no contact, no less — arrives to whisk her away, despite Ryohei being nothing but good to her. When she visits an old friend who now has ALS, she can't stop talking about her problems and even breaks down, realizing how selfish she's been.
- Lost in Translation: When Asako first meets Ryohei, she calls him Baku. He seems to believed that she called him a tapir and feels insulted.
- Love at First Sight: Between Asako and Baku.
- Love Confession: Ryohei makes one to Asako after several awkward interactions.
- Love Makes You Stupid: Asako throws away her future with the loving, devoted Ryohei for a man who abandoned her without a word and didn't try to contact her in seven years. Multiple characters call her out on this.
- Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Deconstructed. Baku's bizarre nature may be charming, but it doesn't make him a stable romantic partner. To Ryohei, Asako comes off as a MPDG, while the audience is privy to her private history that's motivating her actions.
- Old Flame: Baku to Asako, after seven years of being The One That Got Away.
- Satellite Love Interest: Interestingly, Asako is seemingly made to be viewed as this by the audience, a somewhat Flat Character whose life is made more interesting by the person she's dating — which is why she's more drawn to Baku.
- Switching P.O.V.: Asako is the protagonist in the first part when she meets Baku. Then as she meets Ryohei, we are shown his point of view as she act in a very strange manner. When she finds out that Baku is around, the POV is hers again and we no longer know what the men think.
