It is one of the most awaited series of the year and it is the Festival Séries Mania which had the first to discover this excellent vintage.
Forty-four volumes published, almost 2 million copies sold worldwide: the Japanese manga Les Gouttes de Dieu is a real success. It is therefore not surprising that Apple TV has recovered the rights to adapt it to its streaming platform.
But the ambition is greater than that since this is a Japanese, French and American co-production that takes us from France to the land of the rising sun. The screenwriters moved away from the seinen of Tadashi Agi and Shu Okimoto with a French heroine and no longer Japanese.
Les Gouttes de Dieu began when the world of gastronomy and savoir-faire was in mourning: Alexandre Léger, creator of the famous Léger Wine Guide and tutelary figure of oenology, had just died at the age of 60 in his residence in Tokyo. He leaves behind a daughter, Camille, who lives in Paris.
The young woman goes to Tokyo. While reading the will, she discovers that her father has collected the largest wine collection in the world. Except that to claim this heritage, Camille will have to face a young and brilliant oenologist, Tomine Issei, whom Alexandre trained and whom he describes, in his will, as a “spiritual son”.
AlloCiné had the chance to discover the first two episodes screened at the Series Mania Festival where the series is presented in Official Competition. And we can say that she has a good chance of winning a prize.
The realization of Oded Ruskin manages to pay tribute to the creativity of the manga and to transport us in a world of taste, flavors and textures, thanks to visual ideas rather well found.
The cultural “clash” between the characters of Camille and Issei is quite delightful to see: she, who does not drink a drop of alcohol (for a reason as singular as funny which leads to rather comical situations) and who must relearn to tame the smells, and he, with his Japanese coldness that shows no emotion. But the series comes to scratch the surface to uncover the traumas that eat away at them.
Fleur Geffrier (Prof T) and Tomohisa Yamashita (Alice in Borderland) are incredibly accurate… and funny for the first one, as Camille’s character is funny in spite of himself. On the French side, actors Stanley Weber, Gustave Kervern and Cécile Blois complete the cast.
AppleTV+ will offer the 8 episodes of Les Gouttes de Dieu first to its subscribers, with a broadcast on France Télévision.