Disclaimer: this is a review, and as such it contains spoilers of the whole series. Please proceed to read at your own risk if you still plan on watching this show or if you haven’t finished it yet. You have been warned.

Quartet
(カルテット / Karutetto)
MyDramaList rating: 8.0/10

This drama has been on my list since it started airing on Japanese television begin 2017, I was in Japan at the time and I saw fragments of it but couldn’t watch it, so I decided to put it on my list for later. Now, one and a half years later, I finally watched it. And I have to say it’s one of the more interesting J-Dramas I’ve watched in quite some time.

The story is about 4 people, all musicians, who ‘coincidentally’ meet at a karaoke bar and then decide to spend their winter by rehearsing in the weekends in a villa in Karuizawa, owned by one of the members. They form a quartet called Quartet Doughnuts Hole, and start performing here and there.
The story revolves around these four people, who all seem a bit out-of-the-box, and they’re all really different, but still they turn out to be a very good team.
But as it turns out, they didn’t just end up meeting out of coincidence and they all have their own secrets and reasons for agreeing to spending the winter at the faraway villa.
At the center of the quartet is Mrs. Maki Maki (played by Matsu Takako), a veteran violist who decides to focus on the quartet after the disappearance of her husband in Tokyo. The other members knew her beforehand and somehow look up to her. I say she’s the center of the quartet because at least for two of the other members, their ulterior motive for joining the group was to get closer to this particular person.
As someone who has been admiring Maki-san since his high school period, Beppu Tsukasa (played by Matsuda Ryuhei), has been lowkey following her. After meeting her a few times by coincidence, he takes it on himself to believe it’s ‘destiny’ and even after the quartet starts living together, he feels more and more attracted to her. He plays the viola.
Sebuki Suzume (played by Mitsushima Hikari), a young and quite eccentric cello player, is approached by an old woman (later revealed to be Maki-san’s mother-in-law) to get close to and befriend Maki-san. In the past, she was used by her fraud father to act as a ‘magical wiz kid’ who could predict things (like guessing cards while blindfolded) and this put her future in jeopardy, forcing her to quit her former job and giving up on studying and working for a while.
Fourth, there’s Iemori Yutaka (played by Takahashi Issei), a kind of slouchy guy who plays the violin as well. He’s divorced with a young son he can’t care for and he feels like he can’t be a real father to him, but he hides his own sadness by putting up a nonchalant, sarcastically joking demeanor.
As these four characters start sharing a house, the four of them eat together, they go through awkward and hilarious situations together, they go through romantic and other kinds of tensions together, and all the while their main objective is to keep their quartet alive.

To elaborate a little more on Suzume-chan’s motives of joining the group: in the very first scene of the series, Maki-san’s mother-in-law (aka the mother of Maki-san’s disappeared husband) finds Suzume-chan while she’s out playing cello on the streets and tells her to get close to Maki-san. Eventually, as Suzume-chan starts cooperating, we find out that Mother-in-Law is convinced that Maki-san is responsible for her son’s disappearance and even suspects her of murdering him. In compliance, Suzume-chan records her dialogues with Maki-san in the house and meets with Mother-in-Law in secret to convey the information. However, after getting closer to Maki-san, Suzume-chan starts feeling bad about betraying her trust – she starts getting fond of Maki-san and doesn’t believe she killed her husband, so she stops cooperating. That’s about it for her initial motives. After that, she stays because she genuinely starts liking the quartet.
As it happens, it turns out that Maki-san’s husband is alive, he stumbles into Suzume-chan by chance and ends up at the villa. After talking things through with Maki-san, he insists on a divorce so that he can turn himself in to the police (he robbed a convenience store) without causing his wife any more trouble. With this, the tension between Maki-san and her mother-in-law is also straightened out.

I think one of the great things about the show lies in the dialogue. Even though some scenes seemed really trivial – e.g. whether or not to squeeze lemon over fried chicken- they all had meaning. To take this particular example: Iemori brings up the issue of squeezing lemon over fried chicken on the first night they eat together. It wasn’t necessarily about squeezing lemon over it without asking if everyone was okay with that, but about acknowledging the lemon as a possibility. Later, we find out that for Maki-san this is actually an important issue because she’s had a similar experience with her husband. She’d always squeeze lemon over the fried chicken without asking him, and she finds out via-via that he actually never liked that but never told her- one of the things that led to her realization of the end of his romantic feelings for her.
There were a lot of such seemingly trivial dialogues and references, but in the end I never found any of them truly insignificant. Because somewhere in the same episode it would be used in another context and suddenly the true meaning of it would become clear and it would all fall into place.
Another thing I really liked was the attention for detail. Little habits that the four of them had. For example, when about to perform, they were set apart by their individual ways of preparing themselves. Maki-san has the habit of moving her wedding ring from her left to her right hand, Suzume-chan takes off her socks/shoes, Iemori unbuttons the top buttons of his shirt and loosens his tie, and Beppu-san cleans his glasses. Another of Beppu-san’s habits that became more regular was that, when feeling anxious, he would start rolling up his sleeves (or trousers). This turns into kind of a running gag, mainly for comical use, for example in the case where he is accidentally locked up in the stockroom of his company and all the other members forget about him: when Maki-san finally frees him, we see that he rolled his sleeves all the way up to his shoulders, making it look like he’s wearing a tank top. When at the end of the series Maki-san has disappeared, Iemori stumbles upon Beppu-san in the sitting room with his trousers rolled up to above his knees, again making comical use of the habit.
Suzume-chan has the habit of saying ‘mizomizo shitekimashita‘, another expression I can’t fully translate into English, but in the version I watched it was translated as ‘much excite’. In the Translator’s note, it says that ‘mizo mizo’ is not an actual Japanese word, but I suppose she uses it in the way one would use ‘doki doki’ or ‘waku waku’, expressions that suggest ‘feeling excited’.

Although there are some romantic tensions within the story, the story doesn’t really focus on those. Most of all, I think, because they’re all unrequited feelings (Iemori towards Suzume-chan, Suzume-chan towards Beppu-san, Beppu-san towards Maki-san, Maki-san towards her husband), and the main point is that none of the members want these feelings to become stronger than their desire to remain this bond as a quartet.
Apart from Beppu-san, none of the other members actually really come clear about their feelings and they kind of just let it slide. Suzume-chan even starts helping out Beppu-san and Maki-san and is content with just dreaming about going on a date with Beppu-san herself. One of the most purest things she says is: ‘The person I like has someone he likes. And that person he likes is someone I like as well. So I want them to work out.’ When asked, ‘And what happens to your feelings then?’, she says ‘My feelings… are just laying around somewhere.’ Which is a reference to herself, as she is often laying around the house, sleeping.
Maki-san can’t reciprocate Beppu-san’s feelings, and says that she wants the four of them to stay together like this, because she likes it so much.
Iemori says he acts like he does because he knows that women won’t like him, and that he’s the type that ‘wants to be liked, but tries his best not to fall in love’. It’s a bit hard to read Iemori’s mind, because the way he holds himself seems like an act. You never know when he’s being serious or when he’s joking. He’s the kind of person who would have this joking smile even when he’s serious, and make a joke while he actually wants to prove a point. On the other hand, when he makes a joke or points out something trivial, he puts on his super serious, not-joking face. I also wasn’t sure of his feelings for Suzume-chan until they were clarified. But because he’s like that, it seems like he was always trying to get under everyone’s skin. He would address the most insignificant things as something serious, besides the lemon squeezing thing there was also the time when everyone used brand-names instead of the actual proper Japanese word and he lectured them on that. Things of which you’d think ‘so what?’ But that in itself made him the character.

I think the series is mainly about this weird but wonderful friendship between four weird but wonderful people, and that the friendship and trust that is established between them is stronger than any kind of tension or awkward situation.
When Maki-san finds out Suzume-chan has been recording her conversations, she isn’t even mad at her, although Suzume-chan feels terrible. When Maki-san confesses she isn’t Saotome Maki at all and that she betrayed all of them, they’re not angry at her at all.
You could say that’s soft or something, but I think it really proves how close the four of them got in the end.

I found the ending very strong. At first, Maki-san’s identity fraud is found out and she turns herself in to the police. This results in both her own and all the QDH’s members’ reputations to fall down rapidly and soon no one wants them to perform anymore. However, they find each other again and arrange to hold one more concert in a big hall in Karuizawa, which was their common dream as a quartet. They anticipated that most of the audience would turn up out of curiosity for the group of criminal misfits, and even though they got cans thrown at them while they played, even though half the audience left the hall after the first song – that wasn’t important. The most important thing was that they were there, that the four of them could play together on a big stage. And there were enough people who stayed for them.
To make a link to what I said before about their little habits: at the last concert, after they haven’t played together for a while, it seems like nothing’s changed: Suzume-chan takes her shoes off, Iemori loosens his shirt, Beppu-san cleans his glasses… and Maki-san finds herself searching for her wedding ring on her left hand when she realizes she’s not wearing it anymore. That was a nice little twist.

I think I’ve already summed up pretty much all there was to the story. It was only a 10-episode series, and there really wasn’t that much drama going on, so it’s easy to summarize. I’ll go on to my comments on the cast now.

I knew some of the actors, but they all showed me a new side of their acting, so that was a nice surprise. I only knew Matsu Takako from Frozen, since she sang the original Japanese version of ‘Let it Go’. I’d never seen her as an actress, so that was interesting.
I knew Matsuda Ryuhei from Eigyou Buchou Kira Natsuko, where he didn’t make a strong impression on me (I found the whole series kind of meh, to be honest), but I have to admit I fell in love with him a little bit in this series. He made Beppu-san such a character, a clumsy, stiff, but passionate person who couldn’t help himself and when that happened he would suddenly burst out in this adorable, awkward way. I don’t know why I’ve got a thing for this kind of awkward guy characters, lol.
I didn’t know Mitsushima Hikari, but Suzume-chan was definitely my favorite character, she was unexpected, cute, eccentric, honest and still mysterious.
I saw Takahashi Issei in multiple other series, and I feel he always kinds of gets the same kind of roles, roles that have this strangely sarcastic side. I particularly liked him in Tamiou and Boku no Yabai Tsuma. He seems to always have this dark side, even when he’s smiling. It’s kind of interesting.

Besides the main cast, there were some other interesting side characters, besides Maki-san’s husband and mother-in-law, the owners of the restaurant ‘Nocturn’ where the quartet was employed to perform during dinner hours. While the owners were a married couple, there was a young girl working there names Arisu (played by Yoshioka Riho). This girl is a bit crazy. On first glance, she seemed like this typical ‘cute’ girl, but Maki-san immediately points out the first time they meet that ‘her eyes aren’t smiling’. As it turns out, there’s definitely something wrong with Arisu, although I’m not sure what. I found her kind of creepy. She is the kind of girl that will pretend to be really friendly and then just stare at you with her fake smile and out of the blue say something really disturbing. She seems to be someone who takes life as a kind of game, she can just use people and push them however she wants. In the end, though, something bad almost happens to her and it seemed to me like that made her realize ‘uh-oh, this could’ve actually been really bad’. In the end she’s fired from the restaurant for trying to seduce the owner and at the last concert, she turns up with a foreign fiance/husband, laughing out loud that ‘life’s been a piece of cake!’ (she says choroi – damn these Japanese expressions without an adequately equivalent translation in any other language >_< but it basically means easy-peasy).

Even though the story itself is quite short and there aren’t that many characters, it’s enough to create a very simple story about real friendship. Even though it may not be uttered every single day, the bond that is established between these four people is made very clear, and in the end they just can’t feel at ease if the four of them are not together.

Also fair to comment on, I liked how all the guest appearances or characters that appeared just for one episode, were not just used as one-time guests, but were given a proper part in the development of the story. What I’m trying to say is that their appearances all had meaning and resonated through the rest of the story as well.
For example, I liked that they introduced Maki-san’s husband as more than just a weak guy and that they actually provided his whole perspective of what had happened as well, so that the audience could see for themselves what went wrong in their relationship and not just blindingly take Maki-san’s side.
I also liked that they introduced Iemori’s son and ex-wife. It didn’t only function as background for Iemori’s character, but for the first time we see his most genuine side and the whole thing makes him look more humane.
Basically, I liked how not a single side/guest character was a stereotype. Everyone had a unique trait. Iemori’s ex-wife had a peculiar name, the guy that was chasing him for information about her was always listening to the same song – all the people they encounter have something strange and interesting about them. And those little strange things make it so enjoyable and relatable to watch.
I agree most with what Beppu-san says towards the end, ‘I like the fact that none of us completely has his/her act together’ (minna no chanto shitenai tokoro ga suki desu).
It’s quite heartwarming, in the end. And it makes everything so simple. There’s no need for complicated intriges, everyone is just honest with each other. Whenever something seems off, they tackle the problem head-on. Maybe in the beginning t’s out of necessity, because they can’t rehearse when one person is troubled – but gradually they become genuinely taken with each other and sincerely care for each other’s well-being. It’s all established very naturally, but it never becomes boring.

I really enjoyed watching this, it was nice to see a J-Drama different from the usual genre, in terms of humor, character variety and development. I didn’t see many standard drama tropes, which I approve of. I hope to see more of this kind of genre.
Also, I’m definitely downloading that ending theme song.