Jack Frost Blu-ray Box

Falling in love again while memories remain frozen: Jack Frost tells Ritsu and Fumiya’s achingly tender story against wintertime Tokyo. The sixth collaboration between MBS’s Drama Shower slot and KADOKAWA’s Tunku boys’ love drama label is the programme’s first completely original production. Filmmakers Yuka Yasukawa and Natsuki Takahashi create a frustratingly delicate romance in which two people yearn for each other while an accident reshapes what they remember.

Kyoya Honda and Kosuke Suzuki share the leading roles. Honda plays Ritsu Okusawa, a naturally cheerful illustrator who loses only the memories of dating Fumiya. Combining magnetic presence with boyish innocence, Honda won the grand prize in the 2016 high-school Mr Contest and subsequently worked as a Popteen men’s model, building a strong following among younger viewers. Suzuki plays Fumiya Ikegami, a devoted stationery-company salesman whom others see as dependable, despite his occasionally absent-minded nature. Known for his expressive performances across very different characters, Suzuki appeared in five television dramas in 2022.

Yuka Yasukawa brings a sensitive eye for inner conflict. She directed Dressing Up in 2012; the film won the grand prize and best actress award at the fourteenth TAMA New Wave, reached cinemas nationwide in 2015, and brought her the new director award at the twenty-fifth Japanese Professional Movie Awards. Following work in anthology films and theatre, her second feature Yodaka no Kataomoi was selected for the Tokyo International Film Festival’s Asian Future section and placed tenth in Eiga Geijutsu’s 2022 best-film list.

Natsuki Takahashi received the short-screenplay grand prize at the fourteenth Isama Studio Film Festival for Tadashii Basu no Miwakekata, written while she was still at school. At eighteen, she was the festival’s youngest winner. The following year she directed its adaptation starring Ayami Nakajo; four years later, in 2019, it reached cinemas including Cinemart Shinjuku, with screenings in Osaka and Nagoya. Her other directing work includes the 2022 television drama Mental Tsuyome Bijo Shirakawa-san and the 2022 film Sayounara, Konbanwa, which she also wrote.

Illustrator Ritsu Okusawa and salesman Fumiya Ikegami meet in an old café, fall in love and begin a happy life together. Gradually, Ritsu’s free-spirited ways and Fumiya’s struggles to keep up create distance between them. After an argument one winter day, Ritsu leaves home, suffers an accident and loses consciousness. When he wakes, only his memories of Fumiya are gone.

Hoping to rebuild their relationship from the beginning, Fumiya hides the fact that they were lovers and resumes living with Ritsu. Ritsu then asks to visit familiar places to help recover his memory. Reluctantly, Fumiya joins him on a journey through their shared past: the café where they met, the riverside path they walked, and a place they visited before they began dating. Sweet and bitter memories return to Fumiya, while Ritsu, still unable to remember their relationship, realises he is falling for him again.

This box contains all six episodes and a booklet. Video extras include episode one visual commentary with Honda and Suzuki, making-of footage featuring previously unreleased material, a digest of episodes one to three, trailers, and the opening and ending sequences.