TTK Original — Beyond the Headlines
Spoiler Warning: This article discusses the ending and major revelations of Netflix’s First Love (2022).
Imagine spending years searching for someone you once loved.
You remember everything: the excitement of meeting, the promises you made, the future you imagined together.
Then, after years of separation, you finally find that person.
But she does not remember you.
This is the emotional dilemma at the center of Netflix’s Japanese romance First Love, starring Takeru Satoh as Harumichi Namiki and Hikari Mitsushima as Yae Noguchi.
The series is inspired by Hikaru Utada’s songs “First Love” and “Hatsukoi,” following two people whose lives diverge after a devastating accident.
Its final episodes are designed to make audiences cry.
Yet beneath the beautiful music and romantic cinematography lies a troubling question.
If Harumichi loved Yae so deeply, why didn’t he simply tell her that they had once been in love?
It is not a question invented by critics looking for a plot hole.
Viewers have raised it in Reddit discussions, asking why a man who searched for his first love for so long became so hesitant when he finally had the opportunity to speak to her.
The answer is more complicated than romantic destiny.
It involves memory, guilt, personal responsibility, and the difference between loving someone and wanting them to remember loving you.
What Happened Between Harumichi and Yae?
As teenagers, Harumichi and Yae fall deeply in love.
Their relationship is full of the small details that later become emotionally important: shared music, unexpected meetings, private promises, and the feeling that their future is still open.
Yae dreams of becoming a flight attendant.
Harumichi pursues a career connected to aviation.
But their lives are disrupted when Yae suffers an accident that causes her to lose significant memories, including those of her relationship with Harumichi.
For Harumichi, the love story remains real.
For Yae, the same relationship has effectively disappeared from her conscious past.
The difference creates an extraordinary imbalance.
One person carries the emotional weight of a shared history.
The other cannot access it.
When they encounter each other as adults, they are therefore not beginning from the same place.
Harumichi recognizes a woman he once loved.
Yae encounters a man whose importance she does not fully understand.
This is the central reason their reunion cannot be treated as an ordinary romantic reconciliation.
The Reddit Question: Why Didn’t He Just Tell Her?
In a discussion on r/JDorama, viewers questioned why Harumichi did not have a more direct conversation with Yae after they reconnected.
The question is reasonable.
Harumichi knows who she is.
He knows what happened between them.
And he understands that her memory loss has prevented her from recognizing their shared past.
From a practical perspective, explaining the relationship seems obvious.
He could have told her where they met, how they fell in love, and what happened before the accident.
He could have shown her evidence of their earlier relationship.
He might even have helped her investigate the missing period of her life.
But the series chooses a different emotional route.
Harumichi remains restrained.
He spends time near Yae without immediately demanding that she acknowledge their past.
This restraint can be interpreted as an act of kindness.
It can also be interpreted as a failure of communication.
Both interpretations deserve consideration.
Theory One: Harumichi Was Protecting Yae
The most sympathetic explanation is that Harumichi does not want to force Yae into a relationship she cannot remember.
Imagine being told by someone you barely recognize that you were once deeply in love.
Even if the claim is true, it would not automatically recreate the feelings you once experienced.
The information could be overwhelming.
It might make you question your own identity.
It could also create pressure to respond emotionally to a history you cannot personally recall.
Harumichi knows the depth of their former relationship.
But he cannot know whether the adult Yae would want to resume it.
Her life has continued.
She has married, become a mother, and experienced years of hardship and change.
She is no longer simply the teenager he remembers.
From this perspective, Harumichi’s silence reflects an awareness that love cannot be restored through information alone.
Telling Yae the truth might explain the past.
It would not necessarily give her back the emotional experience of that past.
Knowing that someone loved you is not the same as remembering that you loved them.
This distinction is crucial.
Harumichi may be waiting for Yae to approach him as the person she is now, rather than asking her to become the person she once was.
Theory Two: His Silence Was Also a Form of Avoidance
There is a less flattering interpretation.
Harumichi may be protecting himself as much as Yae.
If he tells her everything, he risks discovering that their love cannot be revived.
Yae might believe his story but feel no romantic connection.
She might choose to preserve her current life rather than return to a forgotten relationship.
She might even resent being confronted with an emotional obligation she did not choose.
By remaining silent, Harumichi avoids forcing that question.
He can preserve the possibility that their relationship still exists somewhere beneath the surface.
This is emotionally understandable.
But it is not necessarily fair to Yae.
She is an adult capable of making decisions about her own history.
Withholding information about a significant part of her life may protect her from immediate distress, but it also limits her ability to decide what that information means.
The series does not establish that Harumichi consciously reasons through all these possibilities.
They are interpretations of his behavior.
Still, the ambiguity is what makes the character interesting.
His restraint can be both compassionate and fearful.
He may genuinely want to avoid hurting Yae while also being terrified of hearing that she no longer loves him.
What About Tsunemi?
Harumichi’s relationship with Tsunemi complicates the idea that his actions are purely selfless.
Tsunemi is not merely an obstacle placed between two destined lovers.
She is a person with her own emotional investment in Harumichi.
Reddit viewers have questioned why Harumichi continued that relationship when his feelings for Yae remained unresolved.
It is an important criticism.
A romantic story often encourages audiences to see every relationship outside the central couple as temporary.
But real emotional responsibility does not disappear simply because someone is still attached to a first love.
Tsunemi deserves honesty.
If Harumichi cannot fully commit to a future with her, that matters regardless of how moving his history with Yae may be.
This is where First Love becomes more morally complicated than its dreamy atmosphere suggests.
The audience may want Harumichi and Yae to reunite.
But wanting that reunion does not automatically justify every choice Harumichi makes along the way.
His enduring love is emotionally powerful.
His uncertainty can also cause pain.
Both things can be true.
Why Doesn’t Yae Remember Him Until She Hears the Song?
One of the series’ most memorable moments occurs when Yae hears Hikaru Utada’s “First Love” through an old music player.
The song is connected to her teenage relationship with Harumichi.
As she listens, memories of their shared past return.
Viewers have discussed this scene extensively, including questions about exactly when her memories return and why the music is so important.
The emotional explanation is clear.
The song connects Yae’s present to an experience that shaped her younger self.
It acts as a bridge between two periods of her life.
But it is important not to treat the scene as a precise medical explanation of amnesia.
The drama uses music as a narrative and emotional device.
It does not establish that hearing a particular song is a universally reliable method of reversing memory loss.
Within the story, however, the moment is transformative.
Until then, Harumichi has carried their history largely alone.
When Yae remembers, that history becomes shared again.
The relationship no longer exists only in his mind.
For the first time in years, both people can recognize the emotional significance of what they lost.
The Corn Soup Can: A Memory That Survived Without Explanation
There is a quieter detail that makes the memory theme even more interesting.
Yae keeps an old can of corn potage associated with a moment she shared with Harumichi.
In a Reddit discussion, viewers asked why the can mattered and what her son Tsuzuru was supposed to understand when he discovered it.
The object seems ordinary.
That is precisely why it works.
A can of soup has little monetary value.
It is not an expensive gift or a grand declaration of love.
Its significance comes entirely from the memory attached to it.
The series repeatedly suggests that the smallest objects can preserve emotional meaning long after the original circumstances have changed.
A song.
A ticket.
A familiar place.
A can of soup.
These details become fragments of a relationship that time has scattered.
The can does not prove that Yae consciously remembers Harumichi throughout her adult life.
But it reinforces the story’s central idea: the past can leave traces that remain meaningful even when their full context is no longer available.
This is a poetic interpretation of the object, not evidence of a confirmed psychological mechanism.
Why Did Yae Take So Long to Find Harumichi After Remembering?
Another question appeared on Reddit in 2024.
If Yae eventually remembers Harumichi, why does their reunion take so long?
The answer involves both practical obstacles and the show’s timeline.
Harumichi is no longer easily reachable.
Yae does not immediately possess all the information needed to find him.
The story also incorporates the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupts travel and delays her plans.
Later, information connected to Uta helps establish Harumichi’s whereabouts in Iceland.
This means the delay should not be interpreted simply as Yae choosing to ignore him for three years.
The series provides circumstances that complicate the reunion.
However, the delay also serves a thematic purpose.
First Love repeatedly places time between desire and fulfillment.
The characters do not get to recover the years they lost.
Even when the truth becomes clear, the world does not instantly rearrange itself to accommodate their love.
Their reunion requires another period of uncertainty.
The romance therefore remains tied to the passage of time rather than escaping it.
Is Harumichi in Love With the Real Yae or His Memory of Her?
This may be the most important question of all.
Harumichi’s devotion is often presented as proof of extraordinary love.
But there is a danger in loving someone primarily through memory.
The person we remember is not necessarily the person who exists today.
Teenage Yae is ambitious, hopeful, and full of possibilities.
Adult Yae has experienced marriage, motherhood, separation, financial pressure, and disappointment.
Her life has changed in ways Harumichi could never have anticipated.
If he loves only the girl he remembers, their reunion risks becoming an attempt to restore an impossible past.
But if he can recognize and love the adult woman standing before him, their relationship has a chance to become something new.
This is why their adult interactions matter.
The story cannot be resolved merely by proving that they once belonged together.
It must also establish the possibility that they can choose each other again.
A first love becomes meaningful in adulthood only if it can survive the reality of who both people have become.
That is a more demanding test than nostalgia.
Was Harumichi Right Not to Tell Her?
There is no entirely satisfying yes-or-no answer.
His restraint may have protected Yae from being overwhelmed by a past she could not remember.
It may also have reflected genuine respect for the life she had built without him.
But silence has costs.
Yae could not fully evaluate her relationship with Harumichi without understanding its history.
And Tsunemi’s position raises questions about whether Harumichi was sufficiently honest with the people involved in his present life.
The strongest interpretation is that Harumichi’s behavior contains both love and fear.
He wants Yae to be happy.
He also fears discovering that he no longer has a place in her happiness.
The series invites viewers to sympathize with him without necessarily requiring them to approve of every decision.
That is an important distinction.
A character can be emotionally compelling and morally imperfect.
In fact, those imperfections may make the story more believable.
The Real Meaning of the Ending
The ending of First Love is moving because Yae and Harumichi finally reconnect after years of separation.
But its deeper significance is not simply that destiny brings two lovers together.
It is that the relationship becomes a choice again.
For much of the series, Harumichi remembers a love that Yae cannot access.
Their emotional realities are unequal.
When her memories return, that imbalance changes.
She can understand the past for herself.
She can decide what it means.
And she can choose whether to pursue a future with him.
This restores something more important than nostalgia.
It restores her agency.
Harumichi no longer has to be the sole guardian of their shared history.
Yae can participate in the decision about what happens next.
Their reunion is therefore not merely the recovery of an old relationship.
It is the beginning of a new one, informed by everything they have lost and everything they have become.
Final Verdict: His Silence Was Romantic, but Not Entirely Innocent
Why didn’t Harumichi simply tell Yae the truth?
The series never offers a single explicit explanation that settles every aspect of his behavior.
But his silence can be understood as a mixture of compassion, uncertainty, and fear.
He does not want to impose a forgotten love on Yae.
He also cannot easily confront the possibility that she might no longer love him.
That tension makes his behavior understandable, though not beyond criticism.
And it explains why Reddit viewers continue asking questions about his choices.
The beauty of First Love lies in the fact that memory and love are not identical.
Harumichi remembers everything, yet struggles to act.
Yae remembers almost nothing, yet eventually finds her own way back to the truth.
In the end, their love does not survive merely because it once existed.
It survives because, after years of separation, two changed people find a reason to choose each other again.
Perhaps the greatest act of love in First Love is not remembering someone forever. It is allowing that person the freedom to decide whether they still want to be with you.
Sources and Further Reading
- Netflix — First Love Official Series Page
- About Netflix — First Love Cast and Story Announcement
- Reddit — First Love: Things I Desperately Want to Know
- Reddit — Why Did Yae Wait Three Years to Find Harumichi?
- Reddit — The Meaning of the Corn Potage Can
- Reddit — First Love: Questions About the Memories
- Hikaru Utada Official Website — First Love / Hatsukoi and the Netflix Series
TTK Original — Beyond the Headlines | True Taste Korea