Here and now The synopsis posted on the Kinopoisk page is in no way consistent with the real content of the story, invented by Yoshihiro Izumi and directed by Shintaro Sugawaro with Kento Yamazaki as Otaro Dojima, a bright young man who works as a host at one of the thematic Kabuki-cho clubs, providing specific services to wealthy clients who are willing to generously pay an obliging cavalier, whose modest housing is the second bottom of his, at first glance, luxurious life.
The second bottom of the "Eighth" (the club nickname of Dojima) is a tragedy that occurred twelve years ago, when a younger brother died in the crash of an ocean yacht before his eyes, and the family was in debt on the claims of passengers affected by the disaster, the captain of the ship was declared guilty, then the father of a young man, then his own, and now his son’s father, who took on the burden of settlements with creditors, finding in an unusual job the source of funds he needed.
Twelve years later, the former boy became a female pleaser, a scumbag obsessed with hunting for the contents of thick purses, once targeting a girl with a huge dowry, intending to attack a fortress called “marriage”, but, losing the first half, received a magical chance to start the game again – the same deadly kiss of a stranger, righted death, rolled back his time to correct an annoying blunder.
In genre terms, the plot of the series is an intricate combination of psychological drama and adventurous comedy with a fantastic shade, which is much facilitated by the special character of Masaki Suda - a patented homeless man in an inimitable outfit of junk and rubbish, playing the role of a soothsayer and a sage, who turns out to be almost the "hand of God", directing the course of several destinies.
Mystical thread connects this vagrant with a mad-looking girl Saiko with a lost look from Mugi Kadovaki, ready to serve anything to an unrelenting scumbag, sneaking for another prize with a lot of money, from which he only gets worse, since money for the Eighth is only a source of forgetting about what was and what will not be.
It is obvious that this role became for Yamazaki the prologue to the image of gamer Arisu in the series Alice in the Border that followed a few years later, since it opened up the actor’s outstanding ability to combine the game form of the performance with the dramatic content of the story, when time jumps, giving the opportunity to change the recent past, are superimposed on the irreparability of a distant tragedy that determined in the future and determines the present painful state of Dojima, seemingly deprived of normal relations, drowning in his gambling.
The contract with a strange girl allows the Eighth, having received another kiss of death, to go back again and again seven days, repeating attempts to achieve an unattainable ideal outcome, but, getting rid of one problem, he faces another every time, remembering the day when, saving one person, he lost another, then recoiled from a mad mother and forever cursed his father.
Without thinking about it, the Dojima repeats the same lesson over and over again, making sure that only the present is variable, and all you can do is do now, when what you have done is a continuation for another.