Jiisan Baasan Wakagaeru is a show about an old couple who own and maintain an apple orchard. They've lived long lives, raised a healthy family, and in their golden years a similarly golden apple grows on one of their trees. Curious, the two pluck the apple and eat it, only to wake up the next morning and find that they've been rejuvenated, with bodies reminiscent of their 20's but their decades of life experience still with them.
While I half-expected our elderly couple to suddenly try to live a youthful life to better match their new bodies, the two actually just continue living the life they have, attending elderly activities to the shock of their fellow former geriatrics, to hosting their grandkids and family, who are equally as shocked at their strange fortune.
The show has great moments of comedy in it, and our grandparents Ine and Shouzou have some amazing moments together, but again, I feel like how you enjoy them and this show will depend on your own relationships with your grandparents. For me, I was largely raised by my grandparents when I was young, and late last year I actually lost my grandmother, so the episode where Ine discovers through the Apple's Magic - an hourglass that, through their dreams, both shows their remaining time and allows them to switch between their young and original bodies via flipping the hourglass - that her life is coming to an end, I could feel my own heart collapsing in on itself. I was later brought to tears in that same episode when Shouzou offered some of his own sand to both extend Ine's and essentially ensure they would die together.
So, yes, this show will hit very differently depending on your own family relationships and how much you see your own grandparents within Ine and Shouzou. At its core, though, the show is incredibly wholesome, very funny, and definitely worth a watch regardless. And, if you made it this far, make sure to tell your grandparents you love them, because you never know how much sand is left in their hourglasses.
