Soul Mate Review
Director: Shunki Hashizume
Date Created: 2026-05-14 18:41
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Soul Mate Review: Directed and written by Shunki Hashizume, Sourumeito (ソウルメイト) is an 8-episode Netflix Japanese drama starring Ok Taecyeon as Johan Hwang and Hayato Isomura as Ryu Narutaki alongside Ai Hashimoto, Koshi Mizukami, Ken Yasuda and others. With each episode running close to 40 minutes, the series takes its time to tell a deeply emotional story about loneliness, guilt, trauma and the people who unknowingly become our reason to keep moving forward.
Soul Mate Review
Probably one of the main reasons why the series got such an immense level of hype before its premiere is due to the fact that Taecyeon and Hayato play the lead roles in it. Having such an established name in the Korean drama scene, participating in a BL drama isn’t all that common, which raises great expectations. Netflix’s Soul Mate, however, isn’t just another ordinary boy-love drama full of fan service, but a realistic approach to life that involves broken individuals learning how to love again.
The Netflix Japanese series Soul Mate follows Ryu Narutaki, who is a university ice hockey player whose life takes a drastic turn following a complicated emotional situation that he undergoes with his best friend, Arata. Unable to cope with the situation and overcome the guilt he feels, Ryu moves out of Japan and heads to Berlin in hopes that this move can help him overcome his problems. This is how Ryu meets his second main character, Johan Hwang, a Korean boxer who has also undergone emotional trauma. It all starts at a very precarious moment: the burning of a church building.
The thing that made Japanese drama Soul Mate special to me was its patience with its characters. It’s not the kind of show where romantic tension immediately dominates everything that happens. There are actually scenes in which all that happens is that the viewer sits down with the characters to comprehend their emotions. Sometimes, that means simply observing Ryu quietly listening to Johan talk or seeing Johan watch Ryu laugh for the first time in many painful episodes.
The character who resonated the most with me is Ryu, played by Hayato Isomura, who is so emotional that it is hard not to relate to his suffering. He is haunted by guilt over ruining someone else’s life and is constantly blaming himself. This guilt seems to have affected his life on all levels. Even when he is smiling, you can see sorrow behind it. In one scene, Ryu reveals the reason why he left Japan, and his acting is so convincing and realistic that it is hard not to empathise with him.
Johan from Taecyeon, however, is a person who appears to be strong externally while being emotionally drowning internally. Frankly speaking, I would say that this is one of the most restrained roles of Taec-yeon in many years. For those fans who are familiar with his charming characterisations, this role might come as a pleasant surprise since Johan is a character who was supposed to have learned how to suppress his emotions in order to survive. Loneliness follows Johan in each scene of the film, which Taecyeon masterfully shows with subtle facial expressions without any acting techniques at all.
What keeps their relationship together is that the drama does not force anything between them. It takes time to build a relationship by experiencing things together, like suffering and dependence on each other emotionally. That is why there is believability about their love rather than it being fake. But for those who are looking forward to watching a BL drama filled with romantic scenes, they will be somewhat let down since Netflix series Soul Mate focuses more on intimacy than romance.
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There was yet another character who unexpectedly turned out to be an emotional rock in the movie; that’s Sumiko (Ai Hashimoto). While in the beginning, she seemed to be a mere supporting actor who was there only to make Ryu adjust to Berlin, the further the plot developed, the more significant her role became. The writers wanted to show that soulmates do not have to be lovers in the classical sense of the word; sometimes, our soulmates are just friends who are there when we can take no more of our lives.
However, there are also some aspects that can be improved. For instance, sometimes the Soul Mate series moves at such a slow pace that the viewers have to struggle to stay engaged with the plot. Indeed, when watching the middle episodes, one may start feeling frustrated because the emotional torment becomes quite monotonous. There were moments when I would have liked to see the series give its characters the chance to be happy for a bit longer rather than forcing them back into despair.
Nevertheless, regardless of all its shortcomings, the series Soul Mate managed to stick in my mind for a long time after I watched it. The answer is quite obvious, the drama knows how to portray the sense of loneliness of a person in ways that some romantic television series cannot. People who appear in our lives out of nowhere and gradually turn into the reason why we keep on living, even in the most difficult moments of our existence.
Netflix Soul Mate Review: Summing Up
Overall, Soul Mate is a drama series well acted with deep emotion, which may fail to appeal to everybody owing to its slow pace and understated romance. But for those who appreciate dramas with strong emotional depth, this series offers something truly profound. Rather than an idealised love story, the series is a tale of damaged souls seeking redemption.
