2023-04-21 16:14:00
SERIES – Mirabelle plums, blueberries, cocoa, fern, pencil, chalk, liquorice, clay and celeriac. These are the aromas that the main heroine of drops of god thinks he detects in a sip of wine. And following having seen the eight episodes of this series, available on Apple TV+ this Friday, April 21 before a broadcast on France Télévisions, we have only one desire: to have a drink and play our apprentice oenologists.
The Franco-Japanese series is taken from the 44 volumes of the manga of the same name, written by Tadashi Agi (a pseudonym which actually hides a brother and a sister, Shin and Yuko Kibayashi) and illustrated by Shu Okimoto, sold over 15 million copies in the world since 2008. Glénat editions have sold more than 1.5 million in France which, let us remember, is the second largest manga market in the world following Japan.
The mini-series follows Camille (Fleur Geffrier), a Parisian whose oenologist father and author of a renowned wine guide has just died in Japan. After reading her will, the one who can’t stand alcohol discovers that she has to face Issei Tomine (Tomohisa Yamashita), student and “spiritual son” of the deceased, during three wine-related tests, to inherit his collection of grands crus.
Apple TV+
Tomohisa Yamashita and Fleur Geffrier in “The Drops of God”, series available on Apple TV+ on April 21
In the original comic, the main character is a man, has to take up not 3 but 13 challenges, and the whole story takes place in Japan. But screenwriter Quoc Dang Tran (Do not do this, do not do that, Kaboul Kitchen) had the good idea to include his French touch. “ I introduced a little French touch and this new notion of a confrontation between France and Japan. And it works, because there is this French perception of Japan, which sees this country as a land of tradition, adept at a certain meticulousness. This made possible this duality between the characters, one Japanese, the other French, around the theme of wine “, does he have explain.
Tour in Japan, Thailand, Italy and of course in France – notably in Châteauneuf-du-Pape (Vaucluse) – The Drops of God goes from English to French to Japanese, and mixes the trajectories of our two heroes. If the French Fleur Geffrier had until then multiplied the small roles on television or in the cinema, Tomohisa Yamashita is a superstar in Japan from her beginnings in a J-pop boy band until her role of the “king of clover” in season 2 ofAlice in Borderland (on Netflix).
Explosion of flavors and colors
Despite the sometimes disparate acting of the actors, the series manages to get by on the very didactic side of the original, which told the world of wine and oenology in its smallest details. And his success lies above all in the realization and staging of the visual madness of the manga. Like those scenes where Camille goes through her library of olfactory memories to detect the aromas of a wine, and those where, when she dips her lips into it, the colors explode on the image like a Holi day in New Delhi.
« It’s a form of tribute to the manga, but which had to remain universal: when the heroine tastes the wine, it’s an explosion of flavors, symbolized by colors, and that everyone can understand in the blink of an eye of eye “, describes Quoc Dang Tran, a big fan of the Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda – from whom he borrowed the first name for one of his characters.
The creator assures that he did not know ” not much “to wine and that his series” is not just for wine aficionados, but also for those who know nothing regarding it. Like those who loved The Ladies Game without knowing how to play chess, one must be able to appreciate The Drops of God without knowing anything regarding wine. “Like its main actor Tomohisa Yamashita who confided to being” really fell in love with wine following filming, thousands of viewers around the world – via Apple TV+ and Hulu Japan – might do the same.
And to the French spectators who did not wait to see The Drops of God to descend from the canons, we guarantee that the series made us want to appreciate all the aromas and flavors of it with more sensitivity.
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