Review of Netflix Japan’s “Our Secret Diary”

Directed by Kentaro Takemura, the main character of Japanese teen romance movie Our Secret Diary, high schooler Nozomi Kuroda (Hiyori Sakurada), is your classic Japanese shy girl next door who also adorably happens to be a bit of a closet metal head. Following all the cliches of Japanese teen love stories, this one starts off with Nozomi receiving a love confession note in her desk from a popular boy in school, Jun Setoyama (Fumiya Takahashi), and being both timid and prudent, she agrees to correspond with him to get to know him better as friends before considering going out with him. As they exchange messages in a notebook, she soon finds out that his confession note was actually intended for her best friend, not her, but it’s too late–she’s already started to develop feelings for him.

Fair warning before I begin my analysis of the film: I watched it entirely in Japanese with no English subtitles while still being an intermediate level language learner, but I estimate I understood at least 75% of the story. I chose a simple teen romance specifically expecting a predictable plot and not too much vocabulary out of my range of comprehension precisely because I watched this 2023 film on Netflix in Japan, where English subs weren’t even an option.

Needless to say, I had very low expectations. This bubble gum genre in any culture or language is usually rife with outlandish, eye-rolling extremes, the challenge of language learning the only thing I expected to be engaging. The first sign that this film might be a cut above the rest was, right at the start, some skillful editing to present some pieces of the story in non-chronological order, strategically building suspense and giving the plot momentum moving forward, a technique that served to effectively enhance the reveals in the end.

The misunderstanding over the confession note is the major plot device the story revolves around, but, like all the tropes in this film, it was expertly executed with every tool at the director’s disposal, from character development to lighting and angle of photography, dialogue and pacing. The metalhead girl next door happens to be a lunchtime broadcast DJ at school, which paved the way for a nicely plot paired soundtrack of songs ranging from singer songwriter pop to numetal heavy rock. The actors who play the two main leads really gave a performance they can be proud of–I’ve seen them in other projects that were weird and cringeworthy, generally not only forgettable but more pleasant to forget than not. The centered head shots, well-timed pauses over their expressions, small gestures and exchanges in the background, and all of such techniques brought out the best in their emoting of the characters’ struggles.

I was pleasantly surprised by how nicely the characters were constructed, how predictable cliches were presented in ways that felt realistic and natural. The main character Nozomi is the shy girl that is entangled in this emotional misunderstanding rollercoaster, and the love interest Jun is a popular, idolized boy at school, which normally sets the stage for some over the top wish fulfillment writing, but instead of jumping off the emotional cliff of reality like most Japanese teen romance stories, this one stays grounded in believable characterizations that makes the story just engaging enough to give the plot momentum without jarring, whiplash inducing shifts in character psychology to ruin the ride. Nozomi’s shyness and self-deprecation is simply her character flaw to transform into a strength; she is neither the victim of extreme bullying nor some ugly girl makeover for male gaze. Though not the most popular girl at school, she visually and behaviorally conforms to what her society considers to be an attractive female of her age, and she has loving friends and is well liked. She’s just a normal girl in her world.

The popular boy Jun is on the verge of being the classic Japanese tsundere archetype, where a character starts off with a cold front and turns out to be kind later, but his vulnerable confession at the get go undermines any such coagulated stagnation of his personality, and he seems unconcerned with his popularity with the girls at school, which allows it to add dashes of tension in the background without hijacking the energy of the story.

After finding out it was based on a novel, I got a copy even though it’s out of my Japanese language reading capabilities at the moment and found it’s actually a series of four light novels. I’m curious to see how much of the character and plot construction in the original book laid the groundwork for the screenwriting to work well. Slowly working through it, so far, I can tell it’s about the level of Sweet Valley High series I read as a preteen. Though common wisdom is that the book is always better, I haven’t found that always to be the case (e.g. Bilbo Baggins is a much better developed character in film than in ink :P). As a writer myself, I appreciate that skillfully executed literary elements and plot formulas, even if or especially if cliche, is no easy feat, and though not a filmmaker, growing up in Los Angeles soaked in the milieu of the film industry, I know enough to also appreciate that a film that comes together well despite all of its moving parts is no less than a creative miracle.

Make no mistake, this is still a pop film at best, so expect no paradigm shifts nor insights into the human condition, not to mention it appears to follow modern conservative Japanese societal conventions to the T, only peaking over accepted gender boundaries here and there while playing safely within the lines. Overall, this movie is the lighthearted Japanese teen romance ideal that many other films in the genre have striven for but never achieved. Unfortunately, most of this genre’s movies are not really worth your leisure time, but if you’re looking for an exemplar of the best it has to offer, Our Secret Diary would be it.

Japanese language proficiency aside, as an American with only some familiarity with the cultural norms, I’m definitely viewing this from the perspective of an outsider, though I feel validated in my positive assessment that it was still trending strong as the number one film in Japan on Netflix at the time of this writing.