✦Elzary
Cinema·4 min read·👀 Watched 2022.11.04

He's Expecting

Some things you only truly empathize with — and change over — after living them yourself. That was my biggest takeaway.

2022 · Adapted from Eri Sakai's women's manga · dir. Yuko Hakota · Netflix

Setting the scene

I saw a women's-issues account share it and found the content so interesting — so many lines are wildly politically incorrect, and this kind of show is my favorite 😆

A few (few, few) thoughts

The biggest impression. Some things really do require living them yourself before you're qualified to truly empathize, and then to change. That's probably my biggest takeaway from this show.

Not that it can't be solved — it's whether you want to solve it. Kentaro goes from urging Aki to give up her overseas opportunity and stay in Japan to care for the child, to supporting her and finding a balance for how they'll co-parent. So sometimes a problem isn't a matter of "it has to be a certain way," but simply whether you try to find a way!

That part moved me so much! He says everyone should put themselves first, whoever they are — women especially shouldn't give up their careers just because they have a kid. Having your own career doesn't mean you don't prioritize family; arrange it well and you might even give the child a better life. So my future partner absolutely has to be someone who supports a woman keeping her career — anyone saying you should quit and stay home after giving birth, hard pass ✋

Kentaro's changes after getting pregnant feel like a parallel universe 🪐:

  1. He starts doing things that used to get pushed onto the woman — like choosing the daycare — and even reminds other pregnant men to start looking early 🤣 (otherwise I imagine most men today would say "you handle this kind of thing," right?).
  2. Swapping the male and female positions is so interesting — sure enough, change your seat and you change your brain; what people say becomes totally different (I finally realized how much I used to talk out of turn, haha). Now it's the man who leans toward the atypical "non-logical thinking," the more emotional side, while the woman seems to think about things with logic.

Wrap-up

This show doesn't over-explain the process of the characters' transformation, or the ideas of family and partnership — it mostly touches on them lightly, leaving super-ample room to think; you could call it a switch that triggers our own thinking. Though it looks like an imaginative little drama, in this age where anything can happen, maybe it's a predictive script like Back to the Future? I really hope one day we get to see these things actually happen — the world would surely be turned upside down for a while.

BTW the strings-and-piano score is so lovely 🤣

"You never know what state you'll be in tomorrow; how you respond to these situations decides what kind of person you become — that's one of life's pleasures."

"Since getting pregnant I've met so many different people, each with their own hardships and their own ways of overcoming them. Only after spending time with them did I come to realize this — so to everyone who opened my eyes, I'm endlessly grateful."

"No one should sacrifice themselves — not you, not me, not little Sachi. Everything should put yourself first; cherish each of your own lives!"

#series#drama#netflix
Back to all writings